Dudley's Tale
by Devon Shea
Summary: The life of Dudley Dursley and his family as he gets pulled back into the wizarding world years after he thought he was done with it. Mostly epilogue compliant. There will be references to alcoholism and implied romance, hence the T rating. The disclaimer: I own nothing but the characters I have created for this story. Everything else belongs to JK Rowling.
1. Chapter 1

**August 2, 2011**

Dudley Dursley sat in the overstuffed chair by the empty fireplace, the tumbler of whiskey almost forgotten in his hand. It was The Anniversary. Hell, it was the anniversary of The Anniversary. He had started marking August 2nd ten years ago. It had been a way to remind himself that he was a different person than he had been growing up. He was a man who would take responsibility for his words and deeds.

He had gotten his job at the local elementary school the month previous and although he was just doing the prepwork and class planning at the time, he had already seen enough children during his student teaching to know, beyond a doubt, that he had made the right decision. His father may not have been able to understand why Dudley passed up a chance to work at Grunning's to help "a bunch of scrawny idiots", but Dudley had become his own man. Partly thanks to the attack by creatures he couldn't see, but he could feel. So on August 2, 2001, he had cracked open a cheap beer and toasted his cousin and thanked him, wherever he was, for saving his life and, in a way, helping Dudley try to help other kids like Harry and himself.

As he was remembering that night, he shivered and almost wished he could light the fireplace. Annie poked her head around the doorway and smiled at him, "Dudley, dear, you'd better drink that before Bea decides she wants to help you with it."

Dudley looked up at his beautiful wife and smiled, all thoughts of Dementors gone. "Are they on the loose, then?"

Annie walked fully into the parlor and smiled. "I heard the pitter-patter of a herd of tiny elephants upstairs a few minutes ago. I think there might be an invasion soon." Annie walked over to Dudley's chair and plucked the full glass of whiskey from his hand. "Do you ever even drink any of it?"

Dudley's smile grew wistful, "Not really. I tend to end up chucking it down the drain."

"What a waste of the good stuff." She put the tumbler on the table and sat in Dudley's lap, weaving her arms around him as she settled herself against his broad chest. "You were deeper in thought this year than you usually seem to be. Are you ever going to tell me what you're commemorating?"

Dudley pressed his lips against her hair and closed his eyes, "Probably not." When Annie sighed he asked her, "You don't really have a problem with that, do you?"

She snorted a little laugh, "Darling, we both have our little secrets, remember?"

He smiled again and held his wife a little tighter. "I love you, Annie. You and the kids are the best thing that ever happened to me. Maybe when we're old and grey I'll tell you what's so important to me about this date."

Annie grinned wickedly, "I'll hold you to that, Duddy-kins."

He groaned, "Annie!" She just laughed at him and squeezed him harder. They sat like that, just holding each other for a few minutes. Soon enough, they heard the sound of their two oldest children coming down the stairs. Beatrice and Melissa were on their way down. They were coming slowly enough that their parents realized Bea must be holding her three-year old sister's hand.

They looked at each other and grinned, then just waited for the girls to pop into the parlor. And they waited. And waited a minute more before they realized what the true aim of the girls' venture downstairs was. Together, they said, "The cookies."

Dudley and Annie looked at the door for a long moment before he asked, "So, do we surprise them or let them get away with it this time?"

Annie chewed her lip, "Depends on if they break something in there." The parents heard the scrape of one of the chairs as the girls, or at least Bea, pulled it over to where the cookie jar was stashed on the counter. They listened to their daughters giggle as they raided the jar filled with jammie dodgers, the _vworp-vworp_ sound quite clear even from here.

Dudley's shoulders shook with stifled laughter at their giggles. Annie turned around and glared at him. "Be quiet, you idiot. They'll hear you," she hissed.

The chair was pulled back to the table and the parents heard the scampering of little feet coming closer to the parlor and the stairs. They smiled at each other and relaxed back into each other's arms, content to let the little cookie thieves get away with their adventures this time. As they were relaxing again, Dudley felt a little hand on his arm and Annie felt one on her leg. They opened their eyes and saw two little girls beaming up at them, both bearing cookies and huge grins.

"Mummy, Daddy, we got you some cookies!"


	2. Chapter 2

**August 2, 2012**

Dudley heaved the suitcase onto the bed in the hotel he was staying at for the conference he was attending. The NSPCC was having its annual meeting in London this year and someone from Dudley's school district had to attend. He had been the lucky bastard that drew the short straw. As informative as these meetings were, they were also annoying as hell when one had classes to plan and a ton of work to do before the school year officially began. It should have been his boss, Margaret, attending, but she had had the cheek to get pregnant and have her baby a month ago. She was still on maternity leave.

After he had unpacked most of his things, he opened his cell phone and texted Annie to let her know he was at the hotel, safe and sound. She texted back, "Good. Have fun, Dudley."

"Not likely," he snorted to himself and dropped the phone on the bed. He changed out of his jeans and tee shirt into the slacks and shirt he'd need for tonight's opening remarks. It was too damned hot for the jacket. It took less than an hour to get from Guildford to London, but it felt like it had taken a whole day to get here and check in.

Dudley knew why, too. It was The Anniversary. He just wanted to be at home with his wife and children, prop his feet up, drink a toast to Harry and cuddle with his wife. He didn't want to be at a conference.

He looked at his watch. It was only five o'clock. Opening remarks didn't start until seven. He had time to go to the bar and have that toast, at least, and maybe even something to eat while he was at it.

#####

Dudley sat at the bar, munching on pretzels, and waited for his drink. Whiskey for the toast and some water for the meal. He had ordered a meal of pot roast and potatoes. Simple fare, but something of an indulgence for him. Annie was a vegetarian, so he rarely got real meats at home. Sometimes he just wanted a nice hunk of cooked animal.

He thanked the bartender for his whiskey. He put the whiskey in front of him and, realizing this Anniversary wasn't going to be a contemplative one, raised the glass and said to no-one in particular, "To Harry Potter, wherever he may be," and swallowed the shot of alcohol.

As he put the glass down he noticed the surprised look on the face of the man next to him. He smiled quickly and nodded to the extremely blond man with the pointed chin. His water came then and he thanked the bartender again as he looked away from the pale man to the television. It was showing a match between Sunderland and Manchester United with the sound off.

He watched the game with mild interest while he waited for his food. He wasn't a fan of either team, but he, along with so many others, pretty much just wanted to see anyone beat Manchester United. Dudley felt the blond man's continued gaze as the game went on. He finally got fed up with the prickling on his neck and turned to the man three seats down.

"Help you, mate?" he asked with a deceptively mild smile. Dudley had managed to maintain the build he had worked so hard for when he had boxed in school and University by teaching boxing at the Guildford public secondary school. He was not a small man.

The man raised an eyebrow. Just one and Dudley wondered how anyone had mastered that little trick. He cocked his head and seemed to take a steadying breath before he smiled tightly in response. "I couldn't help but overhear the name you toasted."

Dudley nodded at him. "My cousin. Saved my life once." He smiled for real this time. "I toast him every August 2nd."

The man nodded. "I know a Harry Potter. He saved my life once, too, the git."

Dudley snorted the water he had just drunk. "He's a git for saving your life?"

The man smiled ruefully, "More like he's just annoyingly good at times." He took a sip of his own drink, tea. "It can get a little old."

Dudley chuckled. "Well, I used to beat my Harry up when we were kids, so he really had no reason to save me." He nodded, "Annoying as hell for me that I owed him, but what can you do?"

The blond man gave him a real smile. "Same here." He picked up his tea and toasted Dudley with it, "To your Harry Potter, may he be not nearly as annoying as mine."

Dudley picked up his glass of water, "And to yours, the same. Cheers, mate."

"Draco."

"Huh?"

The man smiled, "My name. Draco Malfoy." He extended his hand.

Dudley met it with his. "Dudley Dursley. Are you attending the conference?"

"Conference?"

"I guess that's a no, then. The NSPCC conference starts tonight. I'm representing Guildford and parts of Surrey."

Draco shook his head. "No, I'm in town for business and am supposed to meet someone here in an hour." He gestured to the portfolio that was sitting on the bar in front of him. "I wanted to look over my presentation again before I met him."

Dudley asked, "Mind if I ask what kind of business?"

"No, of course not. Architectural restoration."

Dudley nodded. "Nice. So you restore old buildings?"

Draco smiled. "Yes. I got interested in it after school and went to uni for it." He laughed. "It's at this point my wife tends to drag me away before I get started in on how fascinating it is to watch neglected or damaged buildings take on new life again."

Dudley chuckled, "My wife drags me off when politics, education and child welfare start rearing their heads. Especially when I'm near my dad."

Draco groaned. "Fathers and their insistence that their way is the only way, right?"

"Exactly." Dudley shook his head. "And in twenty years my son will probably be saying the same damn thing."

Draco laughed. "I have a son, too. You're right."

The waitress came over and placed Dudley's meal in front of him. He looked at it and smiled as the steam hit his nose. "Thanks. It looks and smells delicious." He grinned at Draco. "My wife doesn't cook this stuff at home. I indulge when I can."

Draco picked up his tea and portfolio and moved down to the seat next to Dudley. "Looks good. Maybe I'll order that when my prospective client gets here."

Dudley and Draco talked about their wives and children for about half an hour while Dudley ate. The Malfoys lived in Reading, about an hour away from the Dursleys. They laughed when they both mentioned getting away from their parents.

Dudley chuckled, "Mine aren't really that far from us, about twenty minutes, but Dad hates leaving Little Whinging so we have to go there. We just don't do it very often."

"Same here. My father refuses to visit our flat. It's not nearly as big as the house I grew up in." He grinned.

The time for Draco's meeting came closer and they exchanged phone numbers with the vague idea that it might be good for their kids to meet. "Good luck with the client, Draco."

"Thanks, Dudley. I hope your conference is interesting."

_**AN:** I have a lot of this written already. It's sort of a meandering story. I have an idea where it's going to go and then most likely lead into another story, but it's being stubborn and coming out piecemeal. I may update quickly or I may update slowly. Also, a few of the chapters are shorter than others and some are longer._

_I would love to get constructive reviews, since I can't grow as a writer if I don't know what I need to improve. However, if you are just reading it and enjoying the story, that's cool, too._

_Thanks, and I hope you enjoy it._


	3. Chapter 3

**January 13, 2013**

Dudley looked out the window and smiled. The four children and two women were outside building a snowman. It was the perfect day for it. It had snowed the night before and there was a fresh covering of snow. He was joined by Draco who snorted. "Look at them. They're acting like children."

Dudley turned, "The wives?"

"Yes."

Dudley shook his head, "Draco, it actually snowed! Come on, you have to admit this is the perfect day for a snowman." He turned away from the window and grabbed Draco's arm and started dragging him toward the door.

"What the hell?" Draco tried to pry Dudley's fingers off, but those years of boxing had given Dudley a grip that was not to be trifled with.

"Come on, mate, we're joining the 'kids'. You need to build a snowman." He let go of the now-laughing Draco at the closet by the door and opened it, grabbing coats, gloves and hats, shoving them at the helpless man.

Draco put them on, recognizing a battle he wasn't going to win and really didn't want to win anyway, and followed Dudley out the door to the back yard. As they left the doorway, their wives spotted them and grinned at each other. They smiled lovingly at the husbands coming out to play with them and the children. And when the men got close enough, they bent down and let fire with the snowballs they had made earlier just for such an occasion.

The war had begun.

When it was over all four of the adults were covered in snow and looked like they'd just survived an avalanche. The kids were giggling like little madmen. The group trouped in through the kitchen since there was no way Annie was going to let them tromp through the hall with wet boots and clothing. There they stripped all of the outer gear off and left it hanging over chairs to dry out a bit.

Annie set the kettle on to make some tea and chocolate then joined the others in the parlor to relax a bit. Scorpius and Bea were sitting on the floor playing War while Mel sat on her father's lap and Tori cuddled Evan, who was already falling asleep, his thumb tucked firmly in his mouth. Dudley and Draco were talking about something the Prime Minister had said in an address the week before. Annie smiled as she let her eyes close for just a minute.

All four of the adults smelled the smoke at the same time the fire alarm went off, its shrill alarm making their ears hurt. Annie and Draco jumped up and ran to the kitchen. It was on fire. Dudley was in the kitchen right after them, having given Mel to Tori and run after them. Annie rushed to the cabinet under the sink and grabbed the fire extinguisher. Before she could get it out of the cabinet, Draco pulled a stick out of his pocket and shouted something and a yellowish bubble whooshed from the stick to the stove, surrounding the fire and smothering it.

Annie and Dudley looked between Draco and the stove with shock. At nearly the same time, Draco and Dudley both spoke, "I can explain! You're a wizard!"

Draco did a double-take as Tori rushed into the kitchen, having put Evan with the older children and making sure they understood to stay where they were. "What? Dudley? How the bloody _hell_ do you know about wizards?"

Tori interrupted them, "Is everything alright?"

Annie looked at the other three adults and nodded. "I think so," she said very slowly. "Draco just pulled out a stick from his pocket, said something, and it shot some weird bubble at the stove that put out the fire. Dudley seems to know what's going on and Draco is amazed by that. Oh, and the wall behind my stove is going to need some major cleaning." She shook her head. "I think I need a drink."

Dudley turned to her, "Annie…"

She waved her hand at him, dismissing what he was about to say. "Don't worry, love, I won't have one. I just said I needed one." She sighed as she looked from the stove to her husband and friends. "Dudley, go get the kids upstairs or something. Draco, Tori, sit down while I grab a few glasses and some soda for me and whiskey for you. I have a feeling this explanation is going to need something." She shook her head and muttered under her breath, "Now I'm _glad_ Lav wasn't able to come over with Seamus."

Tori smiled and moved over to the cabinet. "I'll get the glasses. The big, tough men can take care of the kids."

#####

Dudley looked at Draco a bit warily, squirming in his chair, the memory of the tail he had once worn very clear in his mind. And that time his tongue had grown to an enormous size was just as clear. Annie sat down and Looked at Draco, the non-verbal orders perfectly obvious. Draco was to start talking.

He smiled a little and fiddled with his glass. "_Oxy reducto_. That's the spell I used. It summons and directs a bubble that air can't pass into or out of wherever the wizard needs it." Draco shrugged one shoulder. "It's used to put out small fires. I just completely forgot Muggles use fire extinguishers."

Annie's brow puckered, "Muggles? Wizards? What?"

Dudley shook his head slowly. "They're, well, Draco is, at least, a wizard. He can do real magic."

Tori raised her hand slowly. "I'm a witch, too, actually."

"I would say the three of you were full of shit, but I know what I saw. Water came out of Draco's what, then, wand?"

The other three nodded their heads.

Draco turned to Dudley, "How the hell do you know about wizards, Dudley? You're as Muggle as can be. No offense, mate."

Dudley snorted, "None taken." He chuckled, "Remember that cousin we toasted the day we met? He grew up with me and went to a witchy school."

Draco's eyes grew wide and he grew even paler as he let go of his glass and visibly gulped. "Seriously? Was he skinny, with black hair, green eyes, glasses and had a scar on his forehead?"

"Yeah, it looked like a –"

"Lightning bolt," Draco finished before Dudley could. The two men started laughing, realizing they had been toasting the same man all along. "What are the bloody odds?"

"Wait a minute, Draco," Tori said, putting her hand on his sleeve. "Are you saying Dudley's cousin is Harry Potter?"

"Yep." Draco propped his arms on the table, put his head in his hands and just shook it.

Tori laughed. "Oh, that's just too funny."

Annie shook her head, "Why is it funny?"

Tori looked at Draco, who looked up, smiled mockingly and toasted the group and his wife with his whiskey. "Let's just say that Dudley's cousin and Draco didn't exactly see eye to eye on, well, anything." She shook her head. "They tended to curse each other in school, in fact. And yes, I do mean that quite literally."

Dudley laughed. "Marvelous. Just marvelous."

Annie let out a gusty sigh and shook her head rapidly, trying to understand. "I want a full explanation, now. Dudley."

He put his hand over hers. "Okay, from the way I understand it, and these two will correct me if I'm wrong, magic is real and the wizards and witches have lived with us, but sort of separated from us for a very long time. They have their own government and banking and schools and everything. Their kids go to some boarding school the same time our kids do. Harry called us non-magical people 'Muggles'. I don't remember the name of the school Harry went to. There they learn how to control their magic and that sort of thing."

He looked at Draco, who had been nodding along with Dudley's words, "Your Ministry evacuated us from our home when Harry turned seventeen. We never saw him again. Is he alright? Dedalus and Hestia just said everything would be alright and sent us back to our old lives. They wouldn't tell us what had happened."

Draco nodded. "Yeah, he is. Tori would know more, since she works with Granger. I don't really see any of them."

"Granger?"

Tori answered Annie's question. "Hermione Weasley now, actually. She works in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. I work in the Department that controls magical creatures. We've had meetings as we're trying to reclassify some of our magical counterparts from creatures to beings to give them better rights and legal recourse."

"Magical creatures?" Annie asked, bewildered at all of the terms being thrown at her at once.

Tori nodded and replied, "Like house elves, goblins and giants, to name a few." Annie's eyes just kept getting wider.

Dudley smiled, remembering something. "Harry said a house elf smashed a pudding once in our house. Mum and dad didn't believe him. He got in trouble with the Ministry for it."

"That would have been Dobby," Draco replied a bit tightly. "He's pretty much the reason Granger, ow! Sorry, Weasley, is so intent on the magical creatures' rights movement." He finished his sentence, rubbing his side where his loving wife had elbowed him.

"Why can't you ever remember to call her Mrs. Weasley?" she hissed.

"Maybe because it's far less painful than to contemplate that she's had more Weasley children to inflict mayhem and chaos upon the world." Draco crossed his arms and rolled his eyes.

Tori huffed. "Obviously, Draco didn't get along with Harry _or_ his friends."

Annie laughed. "Obviously."

"As if you had much to do with Ginny Weasley…" Draco muttered at his wife.

Tori just looked over at him archly, "If you must know, Ginny, Hermione and I were in study group together after you left school." She put her hand on Draco's arm and said gently, "The school was different after, well, you know."

Draco grimaced and covered Tori's hand with his and she turned hers up so they could twine their fingers together.

Dudley grinned and turned to Tori, "So, how is he?"

Tori smiled. "Well, he is somewhat famous in our world, having killed the Dark Lord and he likes to maintain his privacy as much as possible, but I can tell you that he has three children and seems happily married. He's been Head Auror for about five years now."

"Auror? That sounds familiar."

"Wizarding police," Draco responded. "Sort of a cross between Scotland Yard, M.I.5 and the American F.B.I., they deal with magical crime all through England. And sometimes beyond."

Dudley nodded, smiling happily. "I'm glad. My parents did him no favors growing up. Neither did I, for that matter."

Annie turned to Dudley and put her hand on his arm, "Maybe Tori can take him a note from you. At least a little card for Christmas, even though it's late." She turned to Tori. "Do you think this Granger-Weasley woman would pass it on to him if you asked?"

Tori pursed her lips. "It wouldn't hurt to ask, I guess." She looked at Draco. "If you're okay with it, dear?"

Draco snorted, "As long as I don't have to have too much to do them, you can do what you like. Potter and I do much better if we interact as little as possible."

Tori leaned over and kissed her husband on the cheek. "Yes, dear." she replied cheekily.

#####

Annie was a force to be reckoned with. She had the card for Harry's family written out and included the holiday photo of the Dursleys before the Malfoys were ready to leave. She had even found Dudley and Draco playing Rummy with the oldest two children and handed a piece of Bea's loose-leaf paper to Dudley with simple instructions: 'Write your cousin a bloody note.'

So, Dudley found himself banished to the kitchen table where Bea did her little bit of homework, working on a note that would be the first contact he had with his cousin in over fifteen years. How did one put thirty-two years of regrets in the space of an A4?

Finally, after dismissing a number of different openings, he settled on his note.

_Dear Harry,_

_I hope this note finds you well. I tried to find you after University, but there is no telephone directory for someone from my world to find someone in yours. And if I had tried to catch and tie a note to a poor owl, I probably would have just been pecked to death. _

_I realize you might just want to forget all about my side of your family, but I hope you can give me a chance. I want my children to grow up knowing all of their family, not just Aunt Marge and her bloody dogs. Mum still doesn't say much about Aunt Lily or her parents, but the kids have managed to winkle out some stories about when she was growing up. _

_Yes, I have children. My wife, Annie, is including the holiday photo of us so you can see them. My oldest is Beatrice, then we have Melissa and the baby is Evan. Tori says you have three children, as well. I hope one day the cousins can meet and be better together than we were._

_Sincerely,_

_Dudley_

_PS: I also wanted to tell you I am sincerely sorry for the way I treated you as a child. I could probably make all sorts of excuses, but they wouldn't mean a thing. I've learned to take responsibility for my own behavior and, to be frank, I was an absolute jackass._

Dudley read it through a few times and shook his head, knowing it wouldn't get any better or easier no matter how many times he wrote it. He folded it up and put it in the envelope with the card. When he gave Tori the card, he thanked her for playing messenger.

"No problem, Dudley," she smiled up at him from where she was watching Scorpius demolish the other three in Rummy. Melissa and Evan were already in bed.

Tori looked past Dudley toward the kitchen. "How is the damage to the kitchen?"

"Draco said it's pretty much cosmetic. The fire didn't actually get to the wall, just the smoke. The stove is toasted, though, literally. We'll buy a new one tomorrow."

"So, it's just clean-up work for the wall?"

"Yeah."

Tori smiled. "Hmm. Come with me, then. Let's leave the card sharks to their business." She got up and headed into the kitchen. Dudley followed, a bit bemused. The smoky smell was still quite awful, even after airing the kitchen out for an hour. Tori pulled her wand out of a hidden pocket and was about to wave it when Dudley had to ask, "Where the bloody hell did you hide that?"

"Undetectable extension charm on my pockets. I could hide an entire house full of stuff in there and it would never be found. Draco and I both use them since we end up dealing with Muggles so often that we have to hide the Wizarding stuff. I just have to remember exactly where I put it in my pocket or I could look very silly sticking my whole arm in there to find it." She grinned, "Now watch this. I've learned a few things living with Draco." She did an intricate little maneuver with her wand and the wall just started to clean itself. She kept it up until the wall was clean and the smoke and ash that had been on the wall was a tiny little ball of black stuff she picked up off the floor and handed to Dudley.

"There you go." She grinned at the bemused smile on Dudley's face. "I'd have Draco look at it one more time, though, just to make sure there's no damage that was hidden by the smoke."

Dudley laughed and chucked the smoke ball into the trash. He leaned over and gave Tori a little hug. "You witches are handy to have around, you know."

_**AN:** This is a slightly revised chapter. Nothing monumental was changed, no plot thingies. I was reminded in a review that water on a stove fire is BAD, VERY BAD. So, thank you, T.H. Enesley. I couldn't find a spell in the canon listings anywhere that put out fires, so I made one up. If I missed any references to Draco putting the fire out with a jet of water, let me know._


	4. Chapter 4

**January 14, 2013**

Sometimes Hermione Weasley missed the Time-Turner she had when she was twelve. She snarled at the neat piles of paperwork on her desk and overflowing inbox. Lunchtime was just about here and she couldn't decide whether she should make it a working lunch or get the hell out of her office before she blasted every piece of paper into itty-bitty scraps with a few well-placed curses.

She was just about to take out her wand when she heard a knock on her door. "Come in," she called out. The door opened and it was Astoria Malfoy, smiling nervously.

"Hi, Hermione, I saw your assistant was gone but I figured I'd take a chance on you being here."

Hermione groaned, "Please don't tell me Bilkins wants to rewrite subsection four _again_."

Tori laughed. "No. Well, he does, but we told him if he tries he'll end up looking like a victim of the Experimental Charms Department." Hermione snorted. "This is something else completely."

She pulled an envelope out of her robes and played with it a moment or two, "I'm playing owl, sort of." She sighed. "My husband and I have some friends who need your help getting this card to the right place."

"Why don't they just send it by owl?"

"Well, they're muggles, actually."

Hermione sat up straighter, "Tori, you didn't violate the Statutes of Secrecy, did you? You know how much trouble-"

Tori held up her hand as she took a seat in one of the fluffy chairs Hermione kept in her office. "No, we did not. Not really. The husband already knew about the wizarding world. We only told Annie because she saw Draco put out a fire with his wand."

"You should have obliviated them."

"No." Tori pursed her lips tightly and shook her head. "I've come to consider these people extremely good friends. I will not hide this from them."

"But-"

"No, Hermione, I will not obliviate Annie. Dudley would hate us for it."

"Dudley?"

Tori nodded, "Yes, Dudley. Dudley Dursley. He's the one the card is from."

"Dudley Dursley? Harry's _cousin_, Dudley?" Hermione's mouth stayed open after she finished her question.

Tori nodded again and placed the card on Hermione's desk. "Yes, exactly. Harry Potter's cousin, Dudley. He would like it very much if you would give that to him." She smiled. "He wants to get to know Harry again and hopes this time they can be friends."

Hermione looked at the card in much the same way she looked at the Howlers that periodically made it to her office and blinked a few times before she answered simply, "Unexpected."

Tori laughed. "I know, really. But honestly, Hermione, Dudley and Annie are really good people. Dudley told me he was a complete ass to your brother-in-law, but he's changed. He's a teacher and school counselor now. She's a children's book illustrator."

Hermione looked up at Tori. "Out of curiosity, why didn't you bring it to Harry yourself? You know where his office is."

Tori sucked in a breath of air. "Hermione, you may not care who my husband is, but a lot of people do. I've really met Harry Potter, what, all of three times? If, as it sounds, his past relationship with Dudley was about as good as his with Draco's, this will probably come better from someone he knows and actually likes."

"Good point." Hermione picked up the card and looked at it then looked at Tori, "I'll get it to him. What happens after that, I can't promise."

"I understand. So do Annie and Dudley." Tori got up to go. "Thanks, Hermione."

"You're welcome, Tori, but wait for me. I'm hungry and you and I need to go over that addendum to the Magical Creatures Act that Simonson wants us to put in." She grabbed her favorite little bag and stuffed the proper file into it while Tori groaned. She grinned wickedly at Tori, "We can go to the Leaky Cauldron for lunch."

"Fine, but if we're making it a working lunch, we have to stop at my office so I can grab my notes." Tori started to walk out. "And you're paying this time," she called back over her shoulder.

#####

Hermione stared at the little envelope in her hands. She hadn't asked Tori any more about Dudley at lunch. She had almost been afraid to. Harry never really liked to talk about the Dursleys and his time with them. Things were going almost too well at the Ministry and in Harry's life, so she should have known some sort of little bomb would be dropping soon.

She sighed and shook her head. "Better to get it over with, old girl."

She sent an owl to Ginny, asking her when she'd be home tonight. She figured Harry would want Ginny to be there for this. This was a decision they'd both have to make, after all, letting Dudley Dursley back into Harry's life.

She got back to work while she waited for the reply and had almost cleared one whole pile of paperwork with elbow grease instead of her preferred _Reducto_ spell when she got a response from her sister-in-law. _I'm home all day working up new training plans for the ladies, Hermione. Come over whenever._

Hermione looked at the stacks of paper and the single envelope and decided to just call it a day and take the trip to Grimmauld Place. She packed a few files in her bag and told her assistant she was going home for the day, then walked over to the Auror offices.

She stopped by one in particular and just waved to the assistant before opening the door. There was her beloved husband, sitting behind his desk with his head and chair tilted back, feet on top of the desk, spinning his wand randomly and not paying a bit of attention. She shook her head.

"Harry, I think I've figured out-" he stopped talking when he finally looked down and saw his wife with her arms crossed over her chest, brows lifted in disbelief at Ron's casual work attitude. His feet hit the floor and he was out of his chair in a moment and coming around the desk. "'Mione, my love. Come to make your husband a very happy man in the middle of the work day? Naughty, naughty. I like it."

"Ronald Weasley, you are such an idiot. Why do I put up with you?" She smiled as he put his arms around her and gave her a big kiss.

"Damned if I know. I'm just glad you do." He tugged her over to the desk and shoved a few papers carelessly out of the way before sitting on it with her held between his legs. He kissed her again, much more slowly, before asking her, "So, what brings you to this neck of the woods, especially with your bag and coat?" His brow furrowed, "Are the kids okay?"

Hermione smiled tenderly, "The children are fine. I just wanted to let you know I was leaving a bit early. I'm going to steal Harry for a bit. You might want to come if both of you can be spared, actually."

Ron got serious and stood up from the desk. "Is this Auror business? Where's the trouble?"

"Not Auror business, Ron. More like family business." She held up her hand, forestalling Ron's next words, "And, no, no one is hurt or sick. All the Weasleys and Potters are well and accounted for." She sighed, "It's Harry's mother's family."

"Oh."

Hermione grabbed Ron's long overcoat from the rack by the door. "Grab any paperwork you need, Ronald. I've got your coat. I'll just be getting Harry." She left the office before he could answer her and walked a few doors down to the office of the Head Auror.

Harry's assistant waved her in, shaking his head when she asked if Harry was busy with anything. Hermione opened the door, making sure to knock. Harry could still be a bit skittish, even after all these years.

He was sitting at his desk. She had entered before he could make himself totally presentable so she caught him doing a good imitation of the position she had just caught Ron in, feet propped on the desk, staring at the ceiling. She snorted when he stopped pulling his feet down. "Oh, it's just you, Hermione."

"I almost wish I had been Dawlish or Kingsley. I swear, you and Ronald are too alike sometimes."

Harry grinned at his second-oldest friend. "What would you do without us, Hermione?"

"I'd be a heck of a lot more sane, that's what." She made her way over to the desk and slapped his feet off it. "Get your coat. You and Ron are done for the day. Get whatever papers you need and let's go."

Harry immediately turned business-like, just as Ron had. "Is there an emergency? Is anyone hurt?"

"No, Harry. I'll explain it all at Grimmauld Place."

Ron asked from the doorway, "Why Grimmauld Place?"

"Yeah," Harry echoed.

"Because that's where Ginny is. You're going to want her nearby when I give you the message I have for you. Trust me. Just get your coat." She thrust Ron's at him, taking his briefcase so he could put it on. "I'll meet you two at the lift."

Harry cocked his head at the whirlwind that had just left his office. "Is it my imagination or is she getting more like Molly every day?"

"Merlin help us. We're surrounded by them, Harry." Ron sighed. "Let's go, mate, before she gets all wound up."

_**AN:** I'n going through all of the chapters I have written with a fine-tooth comb before I post them. I want to make sure they're still going well with what I want to happen. Hopefully, everyone's still enjoying the story._


	5. Chapter 5

**January 14, 2013**

Harry, Ron and Hermione used the Floo Network to get to Grimmauld Place. Hermione had already sent a message by floo to Ginny telling her to have the Firewhiskey handy. Once the three of them had brushed off the floo powder that seemed to get everywhere on their clothing, Ginny met them in the kitchen.

"Alright, Hermione, what's going on?" she asked her. "Your messages were cryptic, to say the least."

"I know. The kids upstairs?" Hermione asked Ginny, wanting to make sure they didn't see whatever Harry's reaction to the Dursleys' note happened to be, since she really wasn't sure she could predict it.

Ginny cocked her head. "They're at Mum and Dad's with yours, actually. She offered so I'd have a chance to work on the training plans."

"Good." Hermione took a deep breath and let it out again. "I had a visit from Astoria Malfoy today. She had something for you, Harry."

"For me? Astoria Malfoy?" Harry got a puzzled look on his face. "I think I've spoken to her all of, what, three or four times. Why would she have anything for me?"

Hermione pulled the card out of her briefcase. "It was more that she was delivering this for someone else." She handed the card to Harry. "Somehow, and I didn't ask how, she and Draco have managed to become friends with your cousin."

Harry looked down at the card in his hand in shock. Neat, feminine handwriting graced the outside, reading simply "Harry Potter and family."

"This is from Dudley?"

"Apparently."

Ron shook his head in disbelief but it was Ginny who asked the question, "How the bloody hell did the Malfoys meet Harry's muggle cousin?"

Hermione had thought about that and thought she had the answer. "They must have met on one of Draco's muggle architectural restoration projects."

Harry looked up at Hermione, astounded at the card in his hand. "Dudley and Malfoy, friends." He sighed. "This is going to be interesting." With that he started opening the envelope.

Ron put his hand out quickly. "Stop! What if it's some horrible trap?"

"Ronald!"

Ron refused to back down. "No, seriously. This is Malfoy we're talking about, Harry."

Harry shook his head. "No, Ron. Malfoy isn't what he was like when we were kids."

"You want to think that way, but how can you be sure?"

Harry's lips tightened, "I have to think that way, Ron. Or what we did didn't matter." He held the card just as tightly in his hand. "Malfoy hardly even talks to his parents anymore, Ron. You know that. He takes more jobs in the muggle world than he does in the wizarding world. Hell, he even went to muggle university for his degree in architectural restoration as well as taking that apprenticeship with Imhotep Designs." Harry sighed. "No, he has to be different now."

With that, Harry opened the envelope and pulled out the card. A photograph and a folded up piece of paper fell out of it. He read the card quickly. It was a simple one saying. 'From our family to yours, Happy Christmas. With love, the Dursleys." The photograph showed a smiling family. Blond, tall and fit, Dudley had a dark-haired girl about six years old and a strawberry-blond boy about two on his lap. The thin, petite blonde woman sitting next to him on the couch held another strawberry-blonde, this time a girl about five, on her lap. The names on the back read Dudley, Annie, Beatrice, Melissa and Evan Dursley.

Harry handed the photo silently to Ginny and opened the piece of loose-leaf paper. He took a quick breath and read it. "Hunh," he grunted after he finished it. Then he read it again and handed it to Ginny after he was done with the second read.

She passed the photograph and note to Hermione and Ron in turn to read. None of them said anything for a minute or two. Ginny broke the silence. "We'll do whatever you want to do, Harry. You don't have to talk to him again if you don't want to."

Harry nodded. "I know." He paused a moment. "I'm going to think about this for a bit. Do me a favor and don't tell the relatives, alright?"

Ginny patted his hand. "Of course not, Harry." She grinned. "George would probably send him some Ton-Tongue Toffees for old-time's sake if we did."

_**AN:** I know this is a short one, but the next is longer._


	6. Chapter 6

**February 2, 2013**

"Maybe you should be here to smooth the way, Tori?"

_"Trust me, Annie. Draco and I being there would absolutely not smooth the way for Dudley and Harry to reconnect. Hah! It would be horrible_," Tori replied over the phone to Annie's pleading.

Annie had the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she moved around the kitchen, gathering ingredients for the cake she was going to make for dessert. "Well, I'm nervous as hell. Dudley is, too, but he's hiding it better than I am."

_"Well, everything will be fine. Let Harry and Dudley do their thing and you concentrate on Ginny and the kids. Ginny is really nice."_ Tori paused, _"As long as you don't slag on her family."_

Annie laughed. "Yeah, right. I want her family to like mine, twit."

Tori laughed too. _"Seriously, everything will be-"_ Tori paused again. _"Scorpius! I said no riding that broom in the living room!" _She came back to Annie. _"I'm sorry, Annie. I have to go. Scorpius is riding that toy broom around the house again and he's going to kill himself. Or I will."_ she growled.

Annie laughed. "Go for it, Tori. I'm glad I just have to worry about my monkeys climbing and not flying."

_"Ugh! Either one is just as bad. Bye."_

"Bye." She laughed as she hung up the phone.

"What's so funny, love?" Dudley asked as he came into the room to get a glass of water.

"Tori was talking to me about tonight and apparently Scorpius buzzed her on that toy broomstick they got him. She's a bit peeved. He's going to be lucky to make it to age eight the way he's been going lately."

Dudley laughed. "At least ours just climb everything in sight."

"That's pretty much what I said." She accepted the glass of water he had poured for her, too. "Speaking of the little heathens, where are they?"

"Bea and Melissa are watching television. Evan's upstairs napping."

"Good. We'll have to wake him in an hour so he's not too crabby when the Potters get here." She mixed the batter as she spoke, scraping the sides of the bowl as the mixer worked. "Oh, hand me that sugar, will you?"

Dudley acted as her cook's assistant for the next half hour while they spoke about inconsequentials, carefully avoiding the topic of tonight's dinner guests. Once the cake was in the oven of their shiny new stove, they both sat down at the kitchen table.

"So, are we ready?"

Dudley snorted, "Hell, no." He shook his head and chuckled as he replied. "Annie, I spent most of my formative years beating Harry up. I didn't start being nice to him until the summer we were seventeen. And even then I had no clue how to do that. I pretty much just left him alone." Dudley sighed. "This is going to be an interesting dinner, to say the least."

#####

A few hours later, everything was ready. The children were polished and clean (for the moment), the house was as tidy as it could be with three very active kids and dinner was almost finished. They had gone with simple vegetarian lasagna with salad for dinner, and cake for dessert since they had no idea what the Potters were used to.

The doorbell rang as the Dursleys were giving everything one more quick glance. House tidy? Check. Food in the oven? Check. Kids clean? Check. Oops, no check. "Dudley, you get the door while I change Evan."

Dudley laughed, "Kid's got timing, I'll give him that." He was still smiling when he opened the door and got his first glimpse of his cousin in sixteen years. He hadn't changed all that much. He had filled out some but was still on the scrawny side and his hair was still as untamed as ever. Dudley grinned, "Hi, Harry. Long time no see."

Harry chuckled, the ice thoroughly broken by the idiotic comment. "Hiya, Big D."

"Ugh! No one calls me that anymore." He got out of the way and gestured the family inside. "Get in here, it's too bl-, uh, darned cold to be standing out there."

As he gathered the Potters' coats and put them in the closet he gestured toward the living room down the hall. "Annie will be down in a minute. Slight nappy emergency. The girls are in the living room." As he walked down the hall he noticed the two heads peeking out from around the living room doorway and grinned.

He was about to introduce his daughters when his wife came back downstairs with a much fresher-smelling little boy in her arms. "Harry, this is my wife, Annie. My son, Evan, and my daughters, Beatrice and Melissa." As he said their names the girls gave little curtsies. Evan just stuck him thumb in his mouth and regarded the new people in his life with a little suspicion.

Harry smiled as he introduced his family. "Nice to meet you. This is my wife, Ginny. Our sons, James and Albus and our daughter, Lily."

Dudley shook Ginny's hand and turned to the children. "James and Lily? Your parents names, right?"

Harry nodded. "And you did the flower name thing and pulled Evans in there, huh?"

Dudley nodded, too. "It seemed appropriate."

"Yeah."

The women started talking while Harry and Dudley seemed to run out of things to say and just looked at each other hesitantly. Annie and Ginny looked at each other and rolled their eyes at the same time.

The men caught the action and smiled at each other ruefully. "Yours is like that, too, Harry?"

"Oh, yeah, Dudley. She definitely takes after her mother."

Ginny's eyes narrowed on Harry for a moment before she pointedly turned away from him and plucked Evan out of Annie's arms, settling on the couch with the little boy.

James and Albus had been watching, with typical boy disdain, their sister and female cousins immediately bond over the magnetic nail polish that Annie had allowed the girls to wear on this special occasion. Bea was Albus' age but she was just a girl and it was obvious that their only male Dursley cousin was going to be a big disappointment for the next couple of years. Thumb-sucking wasn't exactly something they had in common with him so they started talking about the latest brooms that were in their mother's racing catalogues.

Harry and Dudley watched their families mesh for a moment and, in concert, turned to each other. Harry nodded to the hallway and Dudley nodded yes. They left the wives and children to find their way with each other while they had a long overdue talk.

_**AN:** I just want to thank everyone who has favorited, followed or reviewed my story, or all three! I hope you continue to like it._

_I just want to ask that if I use a British-ism in error, please let me know. I'm a Damn Yankee and proud of it, so although I try to get the slang right, I've been erring on the side of caution and using American-isms if I wasn't sure how something should be used._

_Next chapter is The Talk. I'm going to try to update this weekly now. Much is already written, but I'm being paranoid and going over the already written chapters multiple times before I post it to make sure it's good enough to go up. Also, I still have schoolwork to do, so I might not get the next chapter up until after the 21st or so._

_Cheers!_


	7. Chapter 7

**February 2, 2013**

Dudley gestured Harry into the kitchen before him. Harry couldn't help hesitating a heartbeat before he went in. Dudley caught the moment and grimaced. "I swear, Harry. I'm not going to pummel you when your back is turned."

Harry shook his head and grimaced himself. "Sorry, Dudley. I know that. It's just that I'm not fond of letting anyone follow me through doors. Too many ambushes as an auror." He sat down at the kitchen table. "It drives Ron crazy, too."

"Ron?" Dudley pulled two glasses out of the cupboard and went to the refrigerator. "Water, soda, juice?" He snorted. "Don't know if I want to do this with any alcohol."

"Juice is fine." Harry smiled and replied. "Afraid of 'In vino, veritas'?"

Dudley's mouth crooked up as he sat down at the table after he'd poured them both drinks of apple juice. "Pretty much." He took a sip of his drink before asking again, "So, who's Ron?"

"One of my best friends and my normal partner at work. He and my other friends have pretty much gotten used to my quirks, thankfully."

"Left over from the War?" Dudley asked gently.

Harry just nodded. Dudley nodded in return, neither of them saying much for a minute.

Dudley was the first to open his mouth to say something, but nothing came out. He just sighed and shook his head, finding the strength to talk as the gust of air left his body. "Just have to get it out. I'm sorry for how I treated you as a kid. I really have no excuse. Being a spoiled brat didn't give me the right to do what I did." Dudley said it all in a gush.

Harry's mouth quirked up. "Forgiven, Dudley." He put his hand over the table for Dudley to shake. "You wanted me to come to safety with you guys. I appreciated that."

"Safety," Dudley snorted. "Sorry, Harry, but that was a year of hell. Your Order people did what they could, but those Death-Eater fellows were relentless." He breathed a deep breath. "Anyway, after it was over they just sort of put us back here, fixed a few people's memories so it would seem like everything was fine and life went on from there. Dedalus didn't even tell us what had actually happened. I haven't even gotten it out of Draco. For someone so mellow, he can be amazingly stubborn about some things."

"Mellow? Draco? Draco Malfoy?" Are we talking about the same man?"

Dudley grinned. "I take it he wasn't so laid-back as a kid?"

If Harry's eyes could grow any bigger, they'd have been the size of a house elf's. "Ah, no. Not laid-back. Rather stuck up and haughty, actually."

Dudley nodded. "Yeah, I kind of got that impression from when he does actually talk about his childhood. I have the feeling he and I would have been two peas in a pod."

"Pretty much." Harry grinned, "Between the two of you, my home lives definitely had no shortage of bullies." Harry chuckled. "It actually does make perfect sense for you two to have become friends."

"Well, hopefully, we've grown up enough that we've both outgrown the stuck-up brat bullshit."

"Cheers to that, Big D." The two men clinked their glasses of juice together in a toast, the first one they had ever made in one of their first civil conversations ever.

Dudley put his glass down on the table and asked Harry what he'd been wanting to know for a while. "Draco said that Hagrid fellow carried you in to the castle _dead_. What the hell happened, Harry? Like I said, Dedalus and Hestia wouldn't or couldn't tell me."

Harry took a deep breath. "It's not an easy story, Dudley. If you don't mind, I'll just give you the bare bones."

"That's fine."

"Simply put, Riddle targeted me and my parents because of a prophecy that boiled down to one of us having to kill the other. When he tried to kill me, he didn't count on my mother's protections. They defeated him, but in doing so, a tiny bit of his soul latched onto mine. After we found everything we needed to kill him, the only way that bit of soul could be killed was for him to do it." Harry's gaze turned inward. He looked much like Draco had when recounting his story.

"I had to _let_ him kill me to kill that little bit of him that was inside me. Somehow, I was given the choice to come back. I did and had to let him think he'd won, so we could get all of his followers, or at least as many as possible, at one time. There are still some out there. Anyway, he had Hagrid carry me into the castle to boast. Neville stood up to him," Harry grinned at that, "and I knew it was time to 'resurrect' myself, if you will."

"He and I fought. He died." Harry took a sip of the juice, suddenly wishing it was something stronger. "I'd love to say everything and everybody lived happily ever after, but it's not a fairy tale. The damage he and his followers had done to both the muggle and magical communities was extensive. We're still putting out lingering fires."

"But he's gone, right?"

Harry nodded. "Yeah, Dudley. He's gone. He can't come back. I doubt he could ever even be reincarnated, if you believe in that. His soul was too fractured from what he himself had done to it."

"Good." Dudley smiled grimly. "I know what Mom, Dad and I lived through was peanuts compared to what you went through, but I do mean it when I say his followers put us through hell."

"I must confess, I didn't actually ask Hestia and Dedalus too much about that. Arthur was the one taking care of returning the people being hidden by the Order to their homes." Harry grimaced.

Dudley chuckled. "I liked him. Dad remembered him, though, as the guy who broke our fireplace that time wen we were fourteen. He wouldn't even speak to him. Every word had to be relayed between Mom and Dedalus." He laughed again. "Remember Chinese Whispers, where you tell someone something and they tell the next person and so on until it gets back to the person who made up the message? Imagine that. It was almost hilarious in a ludicrous sort-of way."

Harry grinned. "I never played it, but I can imagine Uncle Vernon doing something like that. Speaking of, how are they?"

Dudley grimaced. "Dad won't go on vacations anymore. He works at Grunings and goes home. He's terrified of leaving for more than the weekend."

"Wow. I never expected that."

"Yeah. I've tried to talk to him about it, but he refuses to go for counseling. He has so much accumulated leave time that the HR people keep saying he's going to have to retire a year earlier than he plans, just so he can have it used up."

"When's he going to retire?"

Dudley snorted, "Never, according to him."

"Ouch." Harry's mouth flattened. "He obviously needs counseling, you're right, but how could we get around the Statutes of Secrecy?"

Dudley shook his head, "Even if you could, there's no way he'd do it, Harry. I'm a friggin' counselor and he won't even talk to me about it. Magic does not get mentioned in the house. It's a hundred times worse than when you lived there. Mum just goes about her business now. She even tried to talk to him about it. According to Dad, that year did not happen."

"So, Aunt Petunia's stuck there?"

"No, actually, she's managed to make some friends since we came back. She's actually growing away from him a bit." He laughed. "She went to Legoland with us last summer and had a ball. She and Annie get on really well and she adores the kids."

"Seriously?" Harry asked in disbelief. "Aunt Petunia, who went ballistic if one dust mote was out of place in the house? That Aunt Petunia?"

"Well, she still does that, but she dotes on the kids." Dudley grimaced. "She really pays a lot of attention to Bea since Dad doesn't really even acknowledge her existence."

"Huh?"

"Annie had Bea before we got married. Dad hates that. Mom tries to make up for it. They're cooking buddies."

"Wow. Cool. My mother-in-law tried to get my sons cooking with her. Didn't work out too well." Harry chuckled at the memory.

"Oh?" Dudley settled back, expecting a good story.

Harry nodded at the memory. "Yeah, Molly decided it would be good if the boys in the family knew how to cook as well as the girls, so she ordered the girls out to play quidditch, while the boys would help her make lunch one day. The whole damned Weasley family is obsessed with quidditch, so you can imagine how the boys felt about that, even those too small to ride the brooms."

"Well, she had Teddy, my godson, James and Fred helping her. Albus, Louis and Hugo were too young to do more than just sit there and watch and whine, but she had them there, too. All James and Fred had to do was peel vegetables for dinner. Teddy was helping cut the meat and layer the casseroles. Of course, she was doing this all the muggle way, since only Teddy had a wand at that point and he wasn't allowed to use it out of school anyway."

"I still don't know exactly how it happened, the boys are still being mum about it, but somehow the veggies started dancing out the door in a conga line. They marched themselves all the way out to the field and started pelting themselves at the girls playing quidditch. Molly was running after the boys who were running after the vegetables cheering them on. She was too upset with them to use the spell that ends other spells. The girls were using the beater bats to fend off potatoes and carrots and the boys were on the ground laughing their asses off." Harry smiled sheepishly. "I'm afraid we men weren't much better than the boys."

"Hermione finally ended the enchantment and we just ended up taking everyone to the Leaky Cauldron for dinner. Molly had the boys for the rest of the weekend. We adults have not asked what the boys' punishment was. We simply do not want know."

Dudley was laughing as he imagined the veggies flying. "Has she given them any more cooking lessons?"

"Individually, yes. Never as a group." Harry grinned. "To tell you the truth, I think it was less the cooking lessons and more the fact that they were missing out on quidditch! All the boys love having time with their Grandma Weasley."

"So, Ginny is a Weasley?"

Harry's grin grew even wider, "Oh, yeah. She's a Weasley. Red hair to accompany the temper and a heart as big as the world."

"They were the ones that you'd go to spend the summers with when you escaped Mum and Dad's, right?"

"Yes. They were, and still are, an amazing family. I count myself extremely lucky for having met Ron that first day on the Hogwarts Express." Harry nodded and so did Dudley.

"Good. I'm really glad you had them to go to, Harry. I'm sorry you had to, though."

Harry shook his head. "Honestly, Dudley, I think it was for the best. Imagine if I hadn't had them to rely upon when I needed them to help me defeat Riddle. If Aunt Petunia had raised me the way she raised you, I don't think I'd have had the strength to go through with things the way they needed to be done. I needed that core of determination that, no offense, deprivation, put into me to be as strong as I was. Just like I needed Ron and Hermione to balance me out and knock me down a peg or two when I was going too far."

Dudley sighed. "I hope you're right, Harry. I still don't think we did you any favors, but I will hope that our neglect and frankly, abuse, did help you in the long run to defeat Lord Voldemort."

"Riddle. Tom Riddle."

"Hmm?"

Harry stood up and rinsed the glass in the sink. "His real name was Tom Riddle, Dudley. He wasn't the Lord of anything but misery, fear, and hate. That's not something that deserves a title."

"You're right. I'll try not to call him that, then." Dudley joined Harry at the sink, rinsed his own glass and smiled at his cousin. "Not that I ever talk about him much."

Harry took a deep breath. "You know, Dudley, as much as I hated what was done to me by your family, I think, after a while, I felt more sorry for you than myself."

"Me, Harry?" Dudley couldn't help the look of surprise that crossed his face. "What are you talking about?"

"They never taught you right from wrong, not really. They gave into your every whim. They didn't take your health seriously. The few times you acted normal and decent to me, they would punish you. They taught you exactly how a person should not be. And they expected you to think it was normal to mentally and physically abuse someone. How you've managed to become what Astoria claims to be a decent, kind person, is beyond me."

Dudley's breath had stopped about halfway through Harry's short speech. When he was finished, Dudley found himself at a loss for words and just stuttered a bit.

"I'm sorry to be so frank about your parents, Dudley. I just wanted to, I don't know, really clear the air, I guess."

"I understand, Harry." Dudley answered, having found his voice again. "I'm not upset with you, not really. It was the dementor attack, I think." Harry tilted his head questioningly at his cousin, wordlessly asking him to continue. "What I saw when they attacked us, well, the Americans would say it scared me straight."

"I saw years' worth of torturing you. I saw the misery we put you through. I saw the fact that eating made me feel good because I was always frustrated and beating you up was my way of gaining my father's approval. You could do magic and it scared the shit out of me, but it was also so damned cool, you know. I'd beat you up and you'd be fine. It wouldn't faze you, at least not where I could see it. You were stronger than us. And it really torqued me, so I gained my parents' approval by treating you like dirt under my feet."

Harry started to say something, but Dudley cut him off. "No, let me finish this, please. It's hard enough." He took a deep breath as Harry shut his mouth and nodded. "When we went into hiding, there was nothing to do but listen to that stupid wireless reading off names of dead and missing. The very thing we feared most was hunting us, or at least would kill us dead for being muggles if it found us. But other magical people were hiding us, the people who had systematically beaten down their hero for seventeen years."

Dudley seemed to run out of steam and deflated a little bit, his gaze turning inward, as Harry's had when he'd been talking about the War. "It was an eye-opener. Combine that whole effin' year with the dementors rummaging through my head and making me see what a complete and utter jackass I was and you start to grow up a little. You start to see that maybe your parents were wrong about things. You start to think that maybe, just maybe, you can do some good with those revelations. I've _tried_ to do good, at least. I know I can't totally make up for my actions for the first sixteen or seventeen years of my life, but I can _try_ to make amends. I can try to make it so no other kids go through what either of us did. I can try, anyway."

Harry put his arm on Dudley's shoulder, drawing his attention back to the present. "All we can ever do is try to make this world a little less dangerous and safer for our family and friends."

"Yeah. Sometimes we'll even succeed. Right, Harry?" Dudley smiled wanly at his cousin, the man who should have been like a brother to him. The fragile foundations of friendship that had been laid by Dudley's handshake almost sixteen years before were shored up by Harry's answering smile, a genuine one in response to the truth finally being laid bare by them.

Harry nodded. "Yeah." They stayed silent for another moment. "We good?"

"We're good. Let's go show the wives we didn't try to kill each other." Dudley slapped Harry's shoulder, sending the slighter man staggering a bit.

"Geez, Dudley."

Dudley chuckled. "You need some boxing lessons, just like Draco."

"Hell, no, that's what I have the wand for."

Dudley grinned evilly. "Oh, way too many possible responses, Harry," he replied as he led the way out of the kitchen and down to the living room where the ladies and their children were. He couldn't help but wonder if he had taken a huge step towards having the kind of relationship with Harry that he always should have had. He also wondered what his parents would say if they found out whom his guests had been today.

_**AN:** I hope this lives up to expectations._

_Cheers._


	8. Chapter 8

**June 7, 2013**

"Mummy! Help!" Annie dropped her pencil on her drawing table and ran up the stairs at her daughter's cry. She heard both of her daughters sobbing as she rounded the doorway to her bedroom. There in the middle of the room was Melissa, spinning up on the ceiling as if she was a fan.

"What the hell? Melissa?!" She grabbed Melissa's hands and tugged, but nothing happened. She couldn't pull her down. Whatever force had her up there wasn't letting her go.

Bea pulled her mother's trouser leg. "Mummy, please get her down. Please," she begged. "I didn't mean to do it." Bea sobbed and buried her face in her hands.

Annie stopped trying to pull her youngest daughter down and tried to calm herself and think logically. "Alright, girls. Here's what we're going to do. Bea, I want you to get me the telephone from my room, please. Melissa, calm down. We'll get you off the ceiling in a tick."

Bea still sobbed as she ran from the room to her parents' across the hall. When she came back a minute later, Annie had Melissa laughing and trying to do a somersault in the air.

She stopped in the doorway as she watched her sister giggle at the sensation of weightlessness now that the fright had passed. Her sobbing started to subside to hiccups.

"Here you are, Mummy. _Hick!_ Is Melissa going to be okay?"

Annie smiled confidently at her daughters, hiding her fear from them. "Of course, sweetie. We're just going to call your father and maybe your Aunt Tori, okay?"

Bea and Melissa both nodded. "Okay, Mummy," they both said at the same time.

Annie dialed Dudley's mobile phone and cursed like a drunken sailor inside her head when she got his voicemail. She didn't bother waiting for the tone, but just hit '1' and left a terse message. "Dudley, do me a favor and come home as soon as you get this. No one is hurt, but we do have a bit of an emergency."

She hung up and dialed Tori. She got a voicemail there and almost cursed in front of the girls when she remembered that Tori's mobile phone wouldn't work in the Ministry building thanks to all the magic employed there. She got lucky when she called Draco's number.

"Malfoy here."

"Draco! You have no idea how glad I am that you answered. Is there any way you could come to our house? Immediately," she spoke in rush.

"What's wrong, Annie?" He asked. "I have a meeting with a contractor in about half an hour. Can it wait until after that?"

Annie gave a slightly hysterical laugh as she watched Melissa spin around on the ceiling and Bea jump up to try to catch her hand each time it passed her head, the two of them giggling madly now that the initial fear had subsided. "Um, no. Please. I don't even know how to describe this, but I think it's a problem that only you or Tori can fix. Help."

"Alright. Be there in a minute."

#####

Draco Apparated to the Dursley's back yard, thankful he'd spent enough time helping Dudley putter around in his shed to know where the safest area to Apparate was. He opened the back door and called out for Annie.

"Upstairs, Draco, in Bea's room."

When Draco entered the room, he just stopped and stared at the youngest Dursley daughter spinning like a pinwheel on her sister's ceiling. "Who put her up there?" he asked quietly.

Annie just shook her head and put up her hands. Bea stopped jumping for her sister's hand and looked down at the floor. "I think I did, Uncle Draco."

Draco knelt down in front of Bea and tipped her face up to meet his. "What happened, sweetheart?"

"She wouldn't leave me alone and I got angry at her and I shoved her and she just flew up there and she got stuck and she couldn't come down and I didn't mean to hurt her and I'm sorry!" The last was said on a wail as she threw herself into Draco's arms and started crying into his shoulder.

Draco picked her up and brought her over to her bed where her mother was sitting, chewing her fingernails. "It's okay, sweetie," Annie said as she took her daughter from Draco's arms. "Maybe Uncle Draco can fix it."

Draco nodded and walked over to where Melissa had started to tear up again. It wasn't fun anymore now that Bea was crying again. Draco stood under Melissa, took his wand out and swished it around, catching the little girl as she dropped toward him.

He stood her on the floor and watched as she ran to her mother and sister on the bed. Annie held both of them as they cried. "I'll be right back." Annie nodded, her throat so closed with emotion that she couldn't even thank him at the moment.

Draco popped into Evan's bedroom and saw the little tyke was still asleep. Not even an earthquake could move him during a nap. He pulled his mobile phone out of his pocket and called Dudley's. This time there was an answer.

"Draco, I can't talk now. I have to get home. Annie just called and said there was an emergency. I have to -"

"Call her?"

"Yeah, so –"

Draco interrupted Dudley again. "I'm already here, Dudley."

"What?" Dudley stammered a bit. "She called you? Why? What the hell happened?"

"Well, it appears your daughter is a witch."

There was silence on the other end of the line for a minute. "I'll be home in twenty minutes. Please tell Annie." With that, Dudley hung up on the man that had become his best friend.

_**AN:** Thank you so much to everyone who has reviewed, favorited or followed this story. I just hope you continue to like it. School is over for me for a bit, so hopefully I can update this frequently. I'm still going to shoot for once a week or so._

_Also, I did a minor edit on Chapter Three. Nothing vital to the plot changed. One kind reviewer (T.H. Enesley) reminded me that water on a stove fire is very bad. I had to fudge a spell since I couldn't find any to put out fires._

_Anyway, enjoy the mayhem._


	9. Chapter 9

**June 7, 2013**

Dudley pulled the car into the driveway and turned off the motor. He sat for another moment behind the wheel, trying to collect his thoughts. With a deep breath he got out of the car and entered his house. "Annie?" he called out.

"We're up here, Dudley. We're in Bea's room." Draco answered for his wife.

Dudley walked over to his wife and daughters and just knelt in front of them. "What happened?"

Bea and Melissa had finally stopped crying, but they still had their faces buried firmly in Annie's body. Annie shrugged as much as she could, still not quite sure what exactly _had_ happened. "Bea screamed for me, so I came running up here and Melissa was hanging from the ceiling, turning like a ceiling fan. I couldn't get her down so I called you, then I called Tori, then I called Draco. He was able to get here and get her down. I'm still not sure how she got up there, exactly."

"Okay." Dudley ran his hands over his daughters' hair. "Are you two alright?"

Both girls nodded while still buried in their mother's arms. Dudley turned to Draco, who had just watched the moment with a slight smile and opened his arms in a typical, 'what the hell happened' gesture. Draco stood straight from where he had been leaning against the open door and led Dudley out of the room so they could talk while Annie got the girls calmed down completely.

Draco nodded at Bea as they were leaving the room and told him quietly as the two men walked downstairs, "Apparently, Melissa was bothering Bea. Bea got fed up with it and pushed her. Well, Melissa must have _really_ been bothering Bea because the shove turned magical and Melissa was pushed all the way up to the ceiling where she got stuck."

Dudley blinked a few times before asking, "How could Bea have done that?"

Draco shrugged, "Obviously, she's a witch and today was the day she manifested. It usually happens around the age of seven or so."

Dudley sat down on the couch and shook his head. "But Annie is totally muggle."

"But you're not." Draco snorted, "Your aunt and cousin and his whole family are magical."

Dudley shook his head again. "You don't understand, Draco. That wouldn't make a difference with Bea."

"Well, it's in the genes, isn't it?"

Annie answered from the doorway of the living room. "But Bea isn't Dudley's biological daughter, Draco."

"Are the girls okay, Annie?" Dudley crossed over to her and held her in his arms.

"They're curled up together on Bea's bed. I don't think they're ever going to let each other go. I'm not sure which of the three of us was most scared." Annie sat down on the couch, Dudley's hand clutched tightly in hers. "Thank you, so much, Draco. I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been able to come." She had visions of Melissa being stuck on the ceiling forever, spinning like a top.

"You're welcome, Annie. Actually, the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad would probably have shown up soon."

"The what?"

Draco chuckled, "Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. They deal with situations like this."

"Hey, I remember them! Harry blew up Aunt Marge once. They showed up and made her forget it ever happened." Dudley chuckled darkly. "It was actually kind of cool."

Annie slapped his arm. "Dudley Dursley! We're not talking about that nasty, old aunt of yours. This is your daughter we're talking about."

Draco drawled, "Well, you just said he wasn't her father, Annie."

Both Dudley and Annie stiffened up like pokers had been shoved down their spines. "Bullshit, Draco. She's mine!" Dudley bristled.

Draco lifted his hands in mock self-defense. "Don't kill me. Merlin, this is going to be an interesting story. Because you are going to tell me all of it, right?"

Annie sighed. "Basically, it boils down to my alcoholism. I have no clue _who_ Bea's father is. I got pissed out of my mind one night, invited some bloke home and shagged him. I couldn't even tell you his name or what he looked like other than him being white with brown hair, it was that foggy. A few weeks later, I didn't get my monthly and found out I was pregnant. It was my wake-up call. I went sober and had Beatrice."

"I met Annie and Bea when the munchkin was only a few months old. She was working the switchboard for Grunings and I met her there when I'd visit Dad." Dudley added.

Annie put her head on his shoulder. "Somewhere along the way, we fell in love and we got married and Dudley adopted Bea."

"So her father could have been a wizard," Draco concluded.

"I guess it's possible," Annie conceded. "I have no idea."

Dudley shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. She is my daughter. If some man tries to take her now-"

"Whoa, Dudley, calm down." Draco put his hands out to stop the beginning of Dudley's unnecessary righteous indignation. "No one can take her away from you. No one would even know who her father is. There's no way that I know of to track that unless Annie wants to put every wizard through a paternity test."

Dudley deflated. "Okay, Draco."

Annie heaved a sigh of relief. "So, what do we do now? Dudley and I know nothing about raising a witch."

Draco grinned. "Don't worry, Tori will have plenty of suggestions. But honestly, at this age it's mostly just about getting them to recognize the signs of their unconscious magic getting out of control and then controlling it. Once she gets to school she'll have her wand to help her focus it."

He chuckled, "Of course, once she gets to school she'll also have to deal with having the whole Weasley/Potter tribe around her…"

"Oh, dear God. Dad's going to go ape when he hears this," Dudley groaned.

Draco laughed even harder. "Oh, the next few years are going to be fun for you, mate."

"Shut up, Draco."

_**AN:** Thanks to everyone who has reviewed. favorited or followed this story. I'm overjoyed by the response. I hope you all like this chapter and its little surprise about Bea. I'm trying to keep this story as canon as possible, so since JKR has stated that Vernon's genes stopped the wizard genes cold, Bea needed a different bio-dad. She's just causing all sorts of trouble, isn't she?_


	10. Chapter 10

**June 7, 2013**

Dudley wasn't sure what to make of it. Bea as a witch? It was, as Tori's favorite fictional character would say, inconceivable. He had never expected more than hugs, kisses and silly pranks from his kids. He wasn't sure if he was scared shitless or happy for Bea.

Draco and Annie were exchanging hugs as Draco prepared to leave. He had managed to postpone his meeting for a bit, but now that the ruckus was over, it was time for him to go. As the Dursleys walked him to the door, he told Annie, "Tori and I will be over with Scorp tonight, alright? We'll have a nice long talk about the vagaries of raising a wizard kid."

Annie nodded nervously. "Okay." She opened the door for their friend and stopped suddenly. A dark-haired man in a sharp grey suit was on the other side of the door, hand raised to knock. He barely managed to avoid smacking her in the face and pulled it back quickly. Next to him was a much older woman wearing glasses that must have been the style about fifty years before and a wildly flowered orange print dress.

"So sorry," he said. "This is the Dursley residence, correct?" He had a gentle smile on his face as he asked.

"It is," Annie replied. "May I help you?"

The woman spoke up, "Sylvia Gladstone, Accidental Magic Reversal Squad. An hour ago, there were two different spells cast in this house. I'm here to reverse them. Step aside." She started to barge her way into the house, but was brought up short by the dark-haired man subtly stepping in front of her.

"Let me introduce myself," he started, trying hard to keep the pleasant smile on his face at his partner's peremptory manner. He stopped talking in shock as he got a glimpse of the man behind Dudley. "Malfoy?"

Draco smirked a bit. "Goldstein." Draco nodded to the rude woman. "I already took care of the issue, Mrs. Gladstone. Bea accidentally flew her sister onto the ceiling. The second spell was simply _Finite_ to get her down."

The older woman huffed, "So, Mr. _Malfoy_, you used magic in front of muggles and decided to just ignore and violate the Statutes of Secrecy."

Draco crossed his arms and smirked even more. "Sorry, Mrs. Gladstone, but the Statutes just don't apply in this situation."

Mrs. Gladstone narrowed her eyes until they were merely slits and reached into her bright fuchsia purse. "Oh, really? How is that so? A muggle household? Just because you say so, you little…"

She was interrupted by Goldstein. "Really, Sylvia. I don't think that's necessary. Sorry, Malfoy," he apologized for his partner and tried to smile at Draco and the Dursleys while Mrs. Gladstone sputtered, sounding much like a boiling teapot. "Um, maybe we can come inside and resolve everything?"

Annie and Dudley looked at each other. "Actually, I don't think so," Annie replied. "You can rest assured that Draco has taken care of everything. Have a nice day." She stepped around Draco and shut the door in the stunned faces of the two agents from the Reversal Squad.

Draco started chuckling grimly. "Well, that must have put a kink in the old bat's tail."

"What the bloody hell was that all about, Draco?" Dudley asked, the fury evident in his voice.

Draco sighed, "The old bat? Goldstein? Or the fact that they were here at all?"

"All of the above," Annie replied in an arch tone.

"Alright. Fair enough." Draco ran his hands over his face. "Those two are members of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad I mentioned earlier. They go where unexpected magic has happened, especially where muggles might see it, and make sure it can be reversed and any muggles' memories changed to explain it away, if necessary. I'm still surprised they didn't show up when your stove caught fire. They must have missed it somehow."

"Anyway, Mrs. Gladstone is one of the oldest members on the squad. She got called out to my house every once in a while when I was a kid, but Father never let her in. So she's never liked my family, but apparently her grandson was killed by my uncle during the war. Now she hates the Malfoys with a passion. Nothing I ever do will make up for what the Lestranges did to her." Draco sat on the chest the Dursleys kept in the hall and shook his head. "She's just one of the more vocal witches or wizards about how evil my family is and how we should all be incarcerated in Azkaban for life, yadda, yadda."

"And that Goldstein chap?" Dudley asked.

Draco nodded a bit. "He's actually a good man. I sort of feel sorry for him that he got stuck with the old bat, but according to Tori, no one else will partner with her. He was at Hogwarts when I was. He was in Dumbledore's Army and fought during the final battle." He narrowed his eyes. "Good duelist. I really don't know why he didn't become an auror."

A knock on the door sounded. The three looked at it. "You should probably let them in. Make sure you tell them you're Potter's cousin. That's why the Statutes don't apply." Draco nodded toward the back. "I really do _need_ to get to that meeting with Chowdhury. I'll leave from here and avoid the old bat."

Dudley held out his hand. "Draco, thank you for helping. Truly, I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't been able to get here."

"No problem, mate. Just make sure they call Potter before they do anything here, okay? We'll still drop by this evening. Just to make sure everything's alright." Draco gave Annie a quick kiss on the cheek and moved back far enough that he could Disapparate. The pop made Annie jump just a bit.

"I'll never get used to that, Dudley."

"Same here. Let's see what these jackasses want now, shall we?" Dudley opened the door to find only Anthony Goldstein on the step, his hand raised again to knock, only this time he pulled it back faster.

Goldstein smiled wanly. "I'm really very sorry about Mrs. Gladstone. She's gone back to the Ministry. I wonder if I might speak with you before she returns?"

"Will you slag off our friend or try to change our memories?" Dudley asked.

Goldstein grinned. "No. To either. Unless Malfoy was somehow wrong and you aren't exempt from the Statutes."

Annie and Dudley looked at each other and shook their heads. There didn't seem to be a way to avoid this. Annie answered this time. "You can come in, but if you do one thing to tick us off, that wand of yours won't mean diddly once Dudley's done pummeling you. And that old bat is not welcome in this house, by the way, ever."

"Fair enough." Goldstein followed the two into the house and into the living room. "Let me start by making sure of a few things. You are Annie and Dudley Dursley, correct?"

"Correct."

He nodded. "And you experienced two charms today. One that propelled and stuck someone to a ceiling and one that ended the spell and brought her down, correct?"

"Also correct, Mr. Goldstein," Dudley answered again.

"Oh, please, call me Anthony." He consulted the notepad he'd pulled out of his jacket. "According to public records, you're all muggles here, so the question is this. How are you exempt from the Statutes?"

Another knock sounded on the door as he was asking this question. Annie stood up. "I'll be right back, but if it's that partner of yours I'm slamming the door in her face again." With that she left two bemused men behind her as she stalked to the front door. They heard her murmuring after she opened the door and then, "But she's not coming into my house," spoken much louder.

"Uh-oh," Dudley chuckled. "Sounds like your partner came back."

Anthony sighed, "She was going for a few Aurors to try to force you to let us in. I figured the polite approach would be better, personally."

"And you would have been right, Anthony." Harry Potter strode into the room, Ron Weasley right behind him and Annie right behind the two of them. "How are you doing, Dudley? There was some weird magic here today supposedly?"

Dudley chuckled, "You could say that. Bea got ticked off at Melissa and put her on the ceiling. Other than that, everything's just peachy."

Harry blinked a few times before his mouth quirked up. "A witch as a daughter, Dudley? Oh, that's just too perfect." He turned to Anthony as he chuckled at the glare Dudley gave him. "What's Gladys going on about Malfoy for?"

Annie spoke up. "He was the one that got Melissa down, Harry. That bitch decided she could insult him just because of his family's past. Is there anyone I can lodge a complaint with? She needs to be written up. Or retired. Something." Annie was getting more and more upset as she spoke. Dudley walked over to her side and put his arm around her shoulders while she spoke. "She was really rude to Draco, Harry. I know he's done some bad things in the past, but if that's the way he gets treated by you wizards, it's no wonder he has so little to do with all of you. I wouldn't want to put up with that bullshit, either."

Dudley found himself nodding his head at his wife's words. Ron hadn't said anything up until now, but he snorted a bit, not realizing the small sound would put him on the wrong side of a kind of wrath he should have been all too familiar with. "And what do you mean by that?" Annie turned on the red-haired man so fast his head went spinning.

Ron, still a fool sometimes, answered truthfully as he saw it, "Malfoy's a git. Always has been, always will be."

Proverbial flames started pouring out of Annie's eyes as all three of the other men winced at Ron's candor. Harry had seen enough of Annie to realize she was as unswervingly loyal as a Weasley female and would defend her loved ones, be they blood or not, until the death. Ron's eyes widened at the look in Annie's eyes and took a small step backward, realizing before she opened her mouth again that he'd put his foot ankle-deep in his. "You listen here, you…"

Annie stopped talking when Dudley put his hand over her mouth and said quickly. "Not now, Annie. This is Harry's partner, Ron, right? I remember you from when we were much younger. Ginny's your sister, right?"

"Erm, yes?" Ron wasn't sure if he should open his mouth but it seemed the wisest thing to do was just go along with whatever Dudley was saying.

Annie glared at her husband over the hand he still held over her mouth. "Look, Harry, is everything settled? Melissa and Bea are fine and no one violated any Statutes or anything because we all already knew about magic and wizards and all that." Dudley asked, trying to get the three men out of the house before the hounds of hell descended upon Ron.

"Yeah, I think everything's good. I'll come over tomorrow with some pamphlets for muggles raising a witch."

Dudley shook his head, "Just send them over with Tori tonight. She and Draco are going to come over for dinner."

Anthony stood up from the couch, tucking the notebook back into the inner pocket of his coat, "I think I have everything I need for my reports, gentlemen and ma'am. Ron, why don't you help me gather up Mrs. Gladstone while Harry says goodbye to his, um, what are you two to each other, precisely?"

"Cousins." Dudley had released his wife's mouth and was rubbing the finger she'd bitten hard. "They're cousins and Dudley and Harry grew up together, so Dudley already knew all about the magic," Annie replied snippily.

"Ah, that explains it, then. Ron, shall we leave the cousins to their goodbyes?" Anthony grabbed the silent Ron by the arm and started pulling him out of the room. "Nice to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Dursley. Maybe we'll meet again at King's Cross in a few years."

Ron didn't resist as he let Anthony pull him out of the room. The others didn't hear his response to Anthony's furiously whispered, "Seriously, Ron, haven't you learned any tact yet?"

"Sorry about that, Annie, Dudley. There's a bit of bad blood between Ron and Draco. Mostly over Hermione." Harry shook his head. "They've not spoken in years, not since the Wizengamot that released Draco on parole, actually."

Annie put her arms over her chest. "I was absolutely serious about that complaint, Harry. Draco hasn't done a damn thing wrong in the time we've known him. He has been nothing but kind to us. He doesn't deserve that sort of treatment."

Harry walked over to Annie and hugged her. "I agree with you, Annie. I also know that you see a part a Draco most people don't. The memories of the Malfoys and their attitudes about blood purity are long. His father is still an avowed blood purist. Unless Draco single-handedly saves all of mankind, most witches and wizards are only going to remember what he did in the past." Harry held his hands up to stave off the angry responses coming from the Dursleys. "I _will_ recommend Mrs. Gladstone be talked to about her unprofessionalism and make sure your complaint is on record. And _I'll_ talk to Ron and have Hermione, Ginny _and_ Molly smack him upside the head for being an idiot. That's really all I can do."

Harry held out his hand to Dudley and gave Annie a quick kiss on the cheek while she silently fumed.

"I'll send the pamphlets to Astoria's office with a note as to why you need them." He grinned. "A Dursley witch. What're your mum and Dad going to say, Dudley?"

_**AN:** So, now Harry knows. Next up, The Parents. ;p_


	11. Chapter 11

**June 23, 2013**

Annie called up the stairs, "Bea, hurry it up. The rest of us are waiting!"

"Mummy, I can't find my other shoe! I've looked everywhere!"

"Oh, for crying out loud." Annie shoved the diaper bag at Dudley and stalked up the stairs, muttering under her breath, "That child is going to be the death of me." As she stomped up the stairs she yelled back, "Young lady, if I find that shoe right away, you are going to be in big trouble."

Dudley looked down at Melissa and Evan. Melissa had her little hand in front of her mouth and was snickering. Evan just looked up at him while holding his hand. He shook his head and suggested, "Shall we wait in the car, you two?"

They sat in the car for a good fifteen minutes before Annie and Bea finally came out. Bea hopped in the car while Annie locked up the house. Bea gave her sister a glare that could have curdled milk.

Annie leaned around her seat once she got in and gave Melissa the same glare, "You aren't going to be doing a thing you like for a few days, Melissa Dursley."

Melissa tried, and failed miserably, to look sorry as Dudley asked, "What did I miss?"

"Melissa decided it would be funny to hide her sister's shoe in her bedroom. Bea, fasten your seatbelt, please." Annie did the same as Dudley pulled out of the driveway. "It was displayed quite prominently on her bed pillow in the arms of her teddy bear, but we didn't look in her room for a bit."

"Alright." Dudley tried to control the smile he knew would be completely inappropriate at this moment. "_Interesting_ prank."

"Yeah, you'd think they didn't want to see their grandparents or something."

Dudley and Annie looked at each other from the corner of their eyes, trying not to grin.

#####

Vernon Dursley was a large man. He always had been. He saw no reason to go along with the diet his namby-pamby doctor had bullied his wife into following for him. His grey mustache quivered at the thought of the cake his wife, Petunia, had made for his son's birthday. It was the first time she had made one in months. He found himself missing his wife's homemade desserts but no amount of yelling had changed her mind. The sweets were banned from the house except for special occasions. If it hadn't been for his assistant getting them from the doughnut shop across the street from Grunnings each day Vernon wouldn't have had so much as a sticky bun since that idiot doctor had told them his heart was bad.

He watched avidly as his wife of nearly thirty-five years put the finishing touches on Dudley's cake. He reached for the bowl of icing before she put it and its sweet temptation in the sink but she rapped him on the knuckles. "No, Vernon. You get a piece when everyone else does."

"Woman, this is my house!" he snapped.

"Mine as well, Vernon, and besides, you never bothered to learn how to cook. So if you want to eat anything other than take-away for the rest of your likely very short life, you'll be a little more polite." Petunia rinsed the bowl out before he could try to grab it again and added, "And please be nice to Annie, dear."

"Hmph! Why should I be nice to that little trollop? She captured my son and turned him against me, she did."

Petunia just sighed. "Vernon, darling, Dudley met her after he'd already become a teacher. You know that." She put the cake in the refrigerator and took her apron off. She kissed her grumpy husband on his whiskered cheek and pushed him gently toward the living room. "And you'll be nice to her because she's given us three beautiful grandchildren and Duddy-kins loves her."

"Two."

"Hmm?" Petunia merely made a noise when Vernon responded as she tidied up the already-pristine living room, brushing away imaginary specks of dust.

"Two grandchildren." Vernon clarified. "You may think of that little bastard as your granddaughter, but I don't and I won't." Vernon crossed his arms petulantly over his ample chest from the comfort of the very large chair he always sat in.

Petunia sighed, giving up the battle with the non-existent motes and perched on the edge of the love seat. "Then at least do me the kindness of not mentioning that, please. We see Dudley so little as it is."

"I-" Whatever Vernon was going to say was cut off as a car pulled into the driveway. Petunia jumped up and hurried to the window.

"Oh, Vernon. They're here!" She rushed to the front door and took a moment to smooth her greying hair and her bright red skirt before she opened the door.

Dudley looked up from the walkway where he had been talking seriously to both girls and grinned at his mother. "Hi, mum." He gave her a hug as he met her at the door.

"Oh, my baby! Let me look at you." She held him out at arm's reach and inspected him carefully while he laughed.

"Mum, we just saw each other a few weeks ago. I haven't changed."

She smiled at her son, "But it's your birthday. You'll understand when these little monkeys start moving out and having lives of their own." She let go of him and crouched down to give both girls hugs.

"Never happening, mum. I plan on locking them both in a tower when they turn fifteen and never letting them out." Dudley grunted as Annie whapped him on the back of the head at the old threat.

"Try it, Dudley," she said darkly.

Petunia laughed and let Dudley and the girls pass as she gave Annie a hug and stole Evan from her arms in one smooth motion. "My father used to say the same about me and-" she paused. "Well, I think all fathers are the same about their daughters."

Annie sighed, "God, help me."

#####

The evening progressed about as Dudley and Annie had expected it to. Vernon doted on little Evan and Dudley, was less affectionate but as loving as he could be with Melissa and virtually ignored Bea and Annie. Bea couldn't care less because her Grandma had taken her into the kitchen to help get the cake ready for her father. She was used to her grandfather's antipathy.

They all had cake and ice cream, with the vast majority of it going down Vernon's gullet. When Petunia started to clean up she sent Vernon, Annie and the girls out to the living room but asked Dudley to stay back for a moment. He smiled and booted Evan out the door with a quick, "Go climb on your grandfather." Eight years of living on his own had taught him the way around a kitchen, so he grabbed dishes and started helping his mother clean up.

"What do you need, Mum?" he asked as scraped Evan's left-over cake into the trash.

Petunia loaded plates into the dishwasher she'd asked for when her arthritis had finally gotten bad enough. "I liked having Bea help me today." She smiled.

"I'm glad, Mum. I wish dad would pay her some attention. She only has you two for grands, after all."

"I know, Dudley, but why did you never tell me Annie's a witch?" Petunia turned to a shocked Dudley and crossed her arms.

"But, but, but," Dudley stammered. "But, she's not!"

Petunia narrowed her eyes at Dudley. "Don't lie to me, Dudley Dursley. Bea saved your cake from falling on the floor tonight. The only way she could do that is-" Petunia put her hand over her mouth. "She's muggle-born! Like Lily!"

Dudley looked at the door to the living room to make sure his dad hadn't heard his mother cry out. He held out his hand. "Mum, we think her biological father was a wizard. Either that or, yes, she's muggle-born. Draco and Tori think it's through the father, though. They had some reason but I didn't really care to listen."

"Oh, Dudley. He won't come back and try to take her away, will he? He can't! We won't let him!"

Dudley was so surprised to hear what had his mother riled up he could only walk over to her and hold her. After a minute he was able to answer, "No, mum. He has no claim on her. Even Hermione says so."

"Hermione?" Petunia's brow furrowed. "I know that name. How?"

"Harry's friend from school. Well, she's his sister-in-law now, as well as being a crack lawyer." Dudley smiled at his mother's reaction. She had gasped and pulled away from her son's broad shoulders.

"Harry? You've spoken to him?" Her eyes were wide with shock. "But, how?"

"I think I'd like to know _why_ you've spoken to that little freak, Dudley. After all he put this family through-" Vernon had entered the kitchen at some point without mother and son noticing.

Dudley braced himself as he turned, "Because he's my only living relative but for you two and Aunt Marge. I want our children to grow up knowing each other."

"I'll not have that freak and his spawn befouling my grandson! I simply won't have it! You're never to speak to him again, do you hear me?" Vernon shouted and pointed a beefy finger at his son.

"I hear you, Dad, but I have no intention of obeying you," Dudley replied calmly. "Harry's a good man. He's a Wizarding police officer, for crying out loud." Dudley continued as his father spluttered. "I like him and he's even forgiven me for all the shit I put him through as a kid. I want my children to learn that sort of kindness. I certainly didn't."

Vernon breathed heavily, too enraged to speak, his face as red as a beet.

Dudley hugged his silent mother. "Mum, you'd better get Dad to lie down. He looks bad. I'll ring you tomorrow." He kissed her wet cheek before leaving the kitchen to gather his family and go home as Petunia directed her angry husband to a kitchen chair to recover from the realization that his son truly was no longer under his direct control and felt no desire to appease his father in everything.

_**AN:** Just to clear up any confusion; Bea hadn't done any detectable magic before Melissa pissed her off and Bea sent her spinning like an astronaut on the Vomit Comet. No one had realized she was a witch before that, not even her. The way I figure it, the AMRS comes out when an appreciable amount of magic is performed, either by length of time or strength of spell, so her quick action of saving the cake this time wasn't big enough to attract their attention. If JK has said otherwise, let me know so I can figure out how to fix any plot holes. If I wrote anything earlier to imply that others had figured out Bea is a witch, I'd appreciate it if someone would point it out, as I haven't been able to find it. Chapters 8-10 played out over a matter of hours, not days._

_Oh, and since Scorch-X asked the question and I wanted to let anyone else who might be interested know: Yes, Sunderland won in the second chapter. They didn't just win, they totally demolished Manchester United and made them cry. Not that I dislike ManU or anything... ;p_

_As always, thank you so much for reviews, suggestions, follows and favorites. The last chapter alone wouldn't have existed if MichGirl07 hadn't made me realize I needed to have something giving Harry's reaction to learning about Bea's witchy-status. I appreciate the chance to become a better writer._


	12. Chapter 12

**June 23, 2013, about 10 pm**

Dudley was laying in bed, his eyes wide open, trying hard not to think about the way his birthday had pretty much gone to pot. Annie had her arm thrown over his chest as she lay snuggled up to him. He had one arm tucked under her, going numb, while the other held her arm close to him.

"Stop thinking so loud, Dudley. You'll wake the neighbors," she muttered, her eyes still closed.

He couldn't help but smile as he turned his head and pressed his lips to her hair, "Thought you were asleep."

Annie shook her head slightly against his shoulder. "Can't. Too worried if Petunia will spill the beans about Bea."

"She won't. Mum has mellowed a lot since we had to go into hiding."

"But your father-"

"Yeah, my father." Dudley paused, not knowing quite how to explain things to her. "I told you a bit about when we had to hide from that Riddle fellow, right?"

"Not too much. You really don't seem to want to talk about it much, so I figured I shouldn't prod." Annie opened her eyes and met his. "Was I wrong?"

Dudley shook his head, "No, you weren't. But I guess I should tell you some of it so you'll understand why Dad is the way he is, especially since it might just affect Bea in the future." Dudley exhaled heavily. "It's not fun, or pretty, so bear with me."

#####

As a kid, you should grow up with a few certainties in life: parents who love you unconditionally, food, clothing, warmth. A home you feel safe in. Well, apparently, whatever my Aunt Lily did to protect Harry, and by extension, us, went away the day he turned seventeen. So, that morning, we loaded up the car and left him behind in that empty house. The one that was no longer safe.

Two of Harry's friends from the Order, Hestia Jones and Dedalus Diggle, took us to a safe house. You'd like them, actually. Hestia was like Mrs. Kramer, the first grade teacher. She was really no-nonsense, but also really nice. Ded, well, he's a character. I really liked him. Anyway, they took us to a safe house in the country. I guess it was owned by one of his relatives. I never did get the full relation. Maybe Mum did. We weren't there long before we travelled to another place, then another place a few days after that we stayed in for about five months.

We didn't know it until later, but apparently the Death Eaters had cast some sort of spell that let them know when a person used a few key words, kind of like government wire-tapping. One of us must have said one of the key words because it called them to us. It was nearly Christmas. Mum and Dad were in the living room while Ded and I were fixing dinner. It was a novelty, you know? Draco and Tori don't do any magic around us really, but Ded did. He'd chop veggies and start fires and all sorts of stuff that was pretty cool. I don't even know which of us said it, but one of us said "Voldemort" and suddenly the alarms he and Hestia had set went off like crazy. Some Death Eaters had Apparated within the boundaries. Ded grabbed me and we Disapparated. He brought us to a predetermined escape spot. Hestia went to the living room and grabbed my parents.

I guess she didn't give them any time to prepare, as if you actually can for Apparation. It's awful, Annie. Dad just collapsed. I'll admit I was too busy puking up my guts to be all that concerned with him. Mum had gone sheet white. Hestia lost a bit of her little finger in the travel. It bled like crazy until Ded sealed it over with some spell.

Dedalus and Hestia had stashed some basic supplies there so we weren't totally helpless, but you know I've never been much of a camper. And Dad? We're lucky he didn't try to throttle Hestia. Mum actually did the best that first night. I guess my grandparents had taken her and Aunt Lily camping when they were younger. She helped Ded and Hestia set up the tents since they were afraid to use their magic beyond some protection spells.

We stayed there in the woods for a few days. Eventually another Order member came and brought us to another safe house. I never caught his name since he really didn't talk to us much. Just Dedalus and Hestia. Raggedy-looking fellow.

Anyway, we had a few months at the next safe house. A few times we had some others hiding out there. Ginny's twin brothers stayed there for an extremely tense week. Dad had decided by then to just pretend it wasn't really happening. He spent that whole week in his room, writing out future plans for Grunnings. Mum brought his meals in to him.

A month or so after Ginny's brothers stayed there, someone slipped up again. I think it was the wizard staying with us, Magnus. Magnus Eastwick. Ded was beating me at wizard's chess again when the alarms went off. He grabbed me and Mum, who had been watching the game while she was doing some mending. We Apparated out of there and waited for Dad, Magnus and Hestia.

I'm not even sure how long we waited but finally Hestia showed up with Dad. But not Magnus. Dad was in a bad shape. Even worse than the first time we did the emergency Apparation.

Turns out the Death Eaters had Dementors with them that time. Ded was trying to avoid Hestia so she couldn't Disapparate with him when they broke into the house. Obviously, Hestia and Magnus had to fight their way out. While they were a Dementor managed to get Dad. I guess he decided go out the back door on his own. Magnus kept the Death Eaters busy while Hestia went after Dad.

The Dementor had him on the ground and was going for his soul when she found him. Hestia told me she wanted to wait for Magnus but she had to get Dad out of there. I still don't know everything that happened, but Hestia told me later that he didn't make it. He gave her the time she needed to save Dad.

Dad was nearly catatonic for a good week after that. I don't know what was worse: Mum's worry or Hestia's anger. If Dad had just gone with them right away, Magnus would probably still be around today.

We had a few more close calls with people called snatchers getting close to our safe house, but that was the worst and, thankfully, we didn't have to move again. But Dad got more and more angry about magic as the months wore on. He never has realized that his pigheadedness is the reason Magnus got killed. I guess I'm still angry about it, too. Magnus was a nice guy. He and Mum grew up in the same area. A generation apart, but they still bonded a bit over their childhood haunts.

Dad became more and more obsessed with getting back to Grunnings. He ended up with three or four notebooks full of grand plans for the company. He just closed himself off from Mum and I. He didn't even really help with house stuff. Of course, he never has, so that wasn't much of a surprise.

When we were finally allowed to go back home, it was pristine. The Ministry totally repaired the house from the damage the Death Eaters had done to it. Mum didn't say much about it, but Dad was furious. I guess he thought the Death Eaters would have left it alone once Harry was gone, even though Hestia was adamant about the fact that they would destroy anything that had protected Harry so he couldn't even think about going back there. It's been completely renovated over the last ten years. The only thing Mum wouldn't let him touch was the cupboard under the stairs. I think it's her penance.

I don't know, Annie. He hates magic. It's not even the dislike it was when I was a kid. The year we were hiding took him from the job that he loves. The utterly normal life he loved. Wizards were responsible for risks to his life and his family's. They both destroyed and rebuilt his house. They had been responsible for a lot of the crap that happened to us when I was growing up and on a fundamental level just offend his sense of order. Magic is unpredictable. The Dementor attack on him probably just sealed the deal. Trust me. I know how it makes you feel. Like nothing good is left in the world. Dad was already on his way to having major anger issues over magic. To be attacked by something magical and evil that he couldn't even _see_? Yeah, not good. He never really had good coping mechanisms to begin with, honestly.

#####

Annie held Dudley's hand as he finished telling her about some of the Dursley family's year in hiding and their homecoming.

"We're just going to have to make sure Bea doesn't do any magic around him. Ever, Annie"

"It's bad enough he ignores her because she's not of his own blood Dudley, but if he takes his anger for magic out on her, he'll just _wish_ that Dementor had gotten him, Dudley. Mark my words."

Dudley grinned. "Sic Tori on him, will you?" The bad memories were being pushed to the back of his mind in the face of his wife's righteous fury.

"Worse, dear, I'll find that Hagrid fellow you're so afraid of."

Dudley sat back abruptly, his hand automatically starting to reach for his bum. He stopped almost immediately, his small smile becoming a look of mild fright. He paused for a moment before he chuckled and reached for Annie. "Evil, evil woman. No wonder I love you so much."

As they sank into bed, glints in both of their eyes, she whispered, "But you have school in the morning, Dudley."

"Your point?" he asked as he nuzzled her neck and started to lift her nightgown up her thighs. He hadn't talked about or even thought so much about that year in quite a while. He really didn't want to think about it anymore and he didn't know of a better distraction than to make love with his beloved wife.

"Oh!" she gasped as he found a spot he decided to explore a little more thoroughly. "No point. Dudley! Just saying, is all. Ummm."

Dudley chuckled huskily at the look on his wife's face and was pulling the nightgown further up so he could remove it altogether when the sound came.

_BEEP BEEP BEEP_ His eyes closed and he rested his forehead on Annie's stomach. _BEEP BEEP BEEP_

"Who the hell would be calling this late at night, damn it!" He reached out blindly with his left hand as he pushed himself off his equally frustrated wife with the other. He looked at the caller ID on the phone as he brought it up to his ear, it read simply RSCH.

Annie pushed her nightgown back down her body as she sat up and listened to her husband's side of the conversation.

"Dursley here…But…Yes, of course, I'll be there as soon as I can…Will he be…I understand." Dudley put the phone back on its cradle and simply looked at Annie, his face devastated.

"Dad's had a heart attack. And the last thing I did was tell him off."

"Oh, sweetheart." Annie put her arms around her husband and he laid his head on her shoulder. Dudley didn't cry but his eyes welled with tears as he held her to him.

Dudley lifted his head and looked her in the eyes. "I've got to be there for Mum," he replied dazedly.

Annie nodded. "Be careful as you drive, Dudley."

Dudley nodded and let go of her as he got out of bed. He quickly pulled on the clothes he had laid out for work the next day, not bothering with the tie he usually wore with them. Thoughts raced through his mind as he dressed. What if Vernon died not knowing how much Dudley loved him, flawed father that he was? How could he live with that guilt? After he was dressed, he turned to his wife and told her, "I'll call you as soon as I know exactly what's going on, alright?"

Annie nodded. "What should I tell the children when they wake up?"

Dudley's mouth flattened in a line as he thought, "I don't know, Annie. I really don't. How about we wait to decide that until we find out exactly what's happening?"

"Sounds good. Give your mother my love."

_**AN:** I'm writing the story of the Dursley's year in hiding, too. If I can get enough of it done I'll start posting it soon. Otherwise, it'll wait just like Draco's back story, which will explain a lot of how he's grown out of the beautiful jackass he was into a decent human being. :)_

_Basically, I have a huge timeline of things that are happening in the entire post-DH universe, with some of them written out. Each of the stories I've posted thus far are in the same universe, including Going Home. I'm just trying to figure out if I can find an appropriate place to have Fred pop up and scare the bejeezus out of Dudley for the fun of it. Maybe when he finally gets to visit Diagon Alley and WWW. I have big plans for George, actually, but they'll have to wait until this story is over._

_There's one character I have a decent amount written about but I haven't posted the chapter that introduces that person yet. :( I'm almost tempted to post everything I have written just so I can get to that character. But then you'd have to wait a long time for any more since I'm not a fast writer._


	13. Chapter 13

**June 24, 2013 – 6am**

The machines pumping fluids into and monitoring the vital signs of Vernon Dursley after his heart surgery had all come together to perform their own little symphony, filling up the room at the Royal Surrey County Hospital with the disturbing rhythm peculiar to hospital wards. Psssst beep pssst beep whoosh. Occasionally a sound could be heard from one of the other rooms in the ward: maybe a faster beep, or a differently pitched hiss, or a patient's quiet moan, or the sound of the nurse's footsteps to change the tempo of the tune filling Petunia's head.

She stared with her hand held tightly in her son's at the man she had fallen in love with and married so many years ago. Vernon was ashen and the tubes and wires that seemed to sprout from him made it look like he was turning into a machine himself, slowly, one bit at a time. Memories flooded through her.

Vernon as a handsome young man, smiling as he gave up his seat on the shuttle for a pretty young stranger on the way to her first day at work. The forgiving look in his eyes when she confessed exactly what her sister and brother-in-law were. Vernon, on the loveseat in his mother's sitting room, asking her to marry him. Vernon clasping her around the waist and spinning her when he finally got the promotion he had hoped for. The tender smile, floating over his face as he watched her walking down the aisle to join him in marriage. The silly grin on his face the day he carried over the threshold of their house on Privet Drive for the first time and then pretended to hurt his back. The proud look in his eyes as he stared at their little baby in the cradle.

The memories turned less happy after that. After the Accident. After Lily was killed by Voldemort and Harry was dropped in their laps. The proud, happy man she had married had started to turn colder after that. And she had let him. She had been so stuck in her rejection of her sister that she had let her husband treat her nephew with disdain and loathing. She had joined in, angry at Harry for depriving her of the _chance_ to reconcile with her beloved sister. Angry at her sister for fighting a losing battle. Angry at herself for not being strong enough to love Harry as she just _knew_ Lily would have done for Dudley if the situations had been reversed. All that anger had to have a release and instead of finding the right one, she had turned it all on an innocent child.

Petunia had realized all of this when she had gone into hiding with Vernon, Dudley and Hestia and Dedalus. The year in hiding had made her face her own faults. It had made her face her fears.

It had done the complete opposite for Vernon. It had made him all the more stubborn and hidebound. He had refused to acknowledge that things were being done just to keep them alive and safe. He had worried more about Grunnings and their _position_ in the muggle world. He had grasped for the one bit of normalcy he could. The fiction that he and his family were sussing out marketing opportunities for a branch of Grunnings in Canada at least had let him keep his job. His job was his identity. It was his touchstone. Petunia had realized that it was more important to her husband than she and Dudley were, ultimately, and that had finally freed Petunia to start growing up and stronger.

Petunia's tears kept running slowly down her cheeks as she stared helplessly at the man she loved, even now, even through all of his faults, even through all of her faults.

"Mum, he'll come out of this. You'll see. Dad's too stubborn not to." Dudley's quiet voice came from her side.

Petunia looked over at her son and smiled sadly. "Dudley, he knew this was a possibility, but he was _too stubborn_ to change." She shook her head. "I don't know if he will recover, Dudley."

"We'll just wait until the doctor comes back in and then we'll hear what he has to say, Mum."

Petunia brought their joined hands up to her cheek and held his cold hand to it. "Be strong, Dudley."

"If you will be, Mum."

"Of course, Popkin."

"Mu-um."

A tiny smile creased Petunia's face at her son's groan. Such a simple thing as embarrassing your adult son could still show that time would keep going, even if it seemed to be stopping and concentrating all of its energies on one devastating moment.

_**AN:** What the heck. This chapter is short and I've gone over it too many times without changing anything. So, here's an extra chapter for you today. Can you tell I have hope for Petunia as well as Dudley?_


	14. Chapter 14

**June 26, 2013**

Draco unlocked the door to his house as he tucked the mobile phone under his other ear, "So, do you need any help moving the bed in?"

_"No, the delivery people are supposed to set it up for us. Mum is still at the hospital and I have work, so Annie will supervise it all."_ Dudley replied as Draco picked up the mail from the floor in front of the mail slot and dropped his briefcase carelessly on the table next to the door.

"How are the kids taking it?"

_"They're still alright. They've never known anyone who had a heart attack and died, so they have no idea how close he actually came."_

Draco riffled through the mail as Dudley spoke. Water bill, electric, gas, mobile. All the usual pests that came at the end of the month. Draco put them in the little basket they had for bills to be paid, even though he and Tori had joined the Twenty-first century by now and paid them all online.

_"Bea is the only one who has any real idea how bad this could have been, but let's face it, he basically ignored her before, so she's more worried about how Mum is."_

"How is your Mum?" He moved into the kitchen and pulled a pumpkin juice out of the muggle refrigerator they had. He opened it with a simple bottle opener.

_"She's waiting on him hand and foot, of course. I've convinced her to get a part-time nurse in to help her, at least. I mean, I'll be going over to help when I can, but I've got two more weeks before I can really do much to help, what with the end of school and all the reports I have to do up. Annie said she'll go over when she can to give Mum a break, but Dad has never liked her."_ Dudley laughed mirthlessly, _"This is going to be as hard on everyone else as it is on him, getting him better."_

Draco tripped over Scorpius' broom and sent it flying around the room as he cursed.

_"Alright, mate?"_

"Damned broom. Scorpius left it in the middle of the living room again and I just tripped over it." He caught it as it made another pass at him and walked over to the cupboard to put it away while he listened to Dudley laughing on the phone.

"Shut up, Dursley."

_"Sorry, Draco. Can't help it. That broom is just way more trouble than it's worth by the way the two of you go on about it."_

"Hah hah. When is Bea's birthday again?"

Dudley stopped laughing immediately. _"Don't you dare. With my luck she'd try to give her siblings rides and we'd find them all circling a chimney stack like we did Aunt Marge that one time."_

Draco laughed. "You know, I never did get the full story on that. You'll have to tell me sometime." Draco heard the front door open and close. "Sounds like Tori and Scorp are home. Let me know if you need anything to get your parents' house set up so your Dad can come home, alright?"

_"Definitely, although if we do need you, you won't mind if I _do not_ tell him my friend is a wizard, right?"_

Draco chuckled. "Not a problem, mate."

The two men hung up as Draco's wife and son came in the living room. He gave his wife a hug and a kiss long enough to make his son gag behind them. He turned to Scorpius and put his hand on the boy's shoulder. "Where's your broom, son?"

Scorpius blanched as he remembered where he'd left it that morning when his mother had told him to get a move on for school and his eyes darted to the floor of the living room, where the broom definitely was not in evidence. "Um." He looked up at his father, his face wrinkled as he tried to figure out the answer. "I don't know, Dad."

Draco took slight pity on the miserable-looking boy. "It's in the cupboard. Where it will remain for a week. I nearly broke my neck tripping over the thing, then it tried its best to dive bomb me."

Scorpius looked at his mother, whose face held no expression whatsoever. He knew he'd get no help from that quarter, given just how many times she had cursed the broom. Deciding it was probably wisest not to argue the punishment, he just replied, "Yes, sir."

"Good. Go up to your room and do any homework you might have."

"_Dad_, today was the last day of school. I don't _have_ any homework."

"Well, then, is your room neat?"

Scorpius sighed, "No." He didn't wait for his father to order him to clean it and just trudged upstairs with his backpack over one arm and his report card waiting to show his father in his hand, knowing full-well his father had sent him out of the room just so he could talk to his mother and give him a tiny bit more punishment for leaving the broom out again.

Astoria managed to hold her grin until after their son had dragged his feet up the top step and disappeared into his room. "That was mean, Draco. You didn't even ask him how he did." She swiped the bottle of pumpkin juice out of her husband's hand and took a drink.

"I'll tickle it out of him later." He took the bottle back and flopped down on the couch, immediately arching his body when he sat on something. He pulled the fake wand out of the seat cushion and shook his head as it turned into a rubber chicken. "Damned Weasleys."

Tori chuckled and took the chicken from him, tossing it onto the table, where it turned back into one of Scorpius' favorite toys. She joined her husband on the couch, snuggling into his side. "I take it you spoke to Dudley today?"

"Yeah. They're moving his dad back home on Saturday."

Tori nodded her head where it rested on his shoulder. "Annie told me. She said the medical supply people would be delivering the bed sometime tomorrow."

"Well, hell. Why did I even think I'd be giving you some real news?"

"I have no idea. Remember, dearest husband, I know everything."

"Did she tell you they've engaged a part-time nurse for Petunia to get a break?"

Tori lifted her head, "Well, well. That is actually news." She laid her head back down. "I'm glad. Petunia is frazzled enough as it is, according to Annie. 24/7 care will wear her down to the bone." Tori paused, "And I've seen enough pictures to know that that's pretty much all she is, anyway."

"I volunteered to help if they need to do some refurbishing to accommodate his new needs." Draco kissed Tori's hair gently.

"Good. Just don't let them know you're a wizard."

Draco chuckled. "That's pretty much what Dudley said." They sat together quietly for a moment before Draco sighed. "Now, let me see if we get to take Scorpius out for his favorite dinner or if he's going to be grounded for a month."

Tori grinned, "Draco, you know very well that my son has never gotten a bad grade in his life."

"Why is it that whenever we talk about Scorpius' schoolwork, he's always your son, not mine?"

Tori's grin widened as she settled into the spot Draco had just left as he stood up to go tickle-torture his only child. "Easy. I was the Ravenclaw, after all, so he obviously got my brains. If he causes trouble, then he's your son. Otherwise, he's all me, my dear."

Draco just shook his head at her reasoning. It was obviously flawed but after almost a decade of marriage he had learned not to argue with his wife when she was being completely unreasonable.

_**AN: **Time to see a little more Draco and family. I'm working overnights this week so I'm spending very little time doing anything other than working or sleeping, although I did manage to get in an hour of bird-watching this morning after coming home from work and saw a lifer - an Indigo Bunting mating pair. I was hoping to get one of the Draco one-shots/back story up, but that's not happening anytime soon._

_To anyone wondering, Tori and Draco have deliberately reduced the amount of wizarding stuff in their house and live fairly muggle-tech lives, due to Draco having to wine and dine muggle clients on a regular basis. Any wizarding stuff is kept strictly hidden away. Imagine the chaos if Scorpius' broom had dive-bombed someone like Mrs. Mason!_

_As always, thank you so much for reviews, follows and favorites. Enjoy!_


	15. Chapter 15

**November 20, 2013**

"Daddy, can I invite Seamus to my party?" Melissa held her father's hand as they walked down the party supply aisle of the local market so she could get ideas as to what kind of party she wanted to have while she helped her father run some errands.

Dudley nodded. "If you want to. It's your birthday party." Dudley paused for a moment. "Just don't be sad if he can't come. Okay, sweetie? He and his parents don't have a lot of money and they might feel uncomfortable if they can't get you a present."

Melissa scrunched her face up thinking about this for a minute. "How about if I tell him he doesn't need to get me a present?" Her face cleared up as she asked this. "Can I do that?"

Dudley smiled. "The only way you could do that is if you told everybody else not to get you a present, Melissa, otherwise _he'd_ feel bad that he didn't get you one and everyone else did. Do you want that?"

"No. I don't want Seamus to be sad. He's my bestest friend."

Melissa thought about it while she looked at the different colors of tableware. She kept thinking about it while they looked at the different decorations.

"Daddy, can I still have a cake?"

Dudley had just completed a credible lunge with the fake pirate cutlass he had picked up. "What?"

"Can I still have a cake if I can't have presents?" Melissa had such a serious expression on her face Dudley had to work to keep the grin off his. He knelt down on the floor in the party section of the store and put his hands on both sides of her face.

"Melissa, of course you can have cake." He brought her little face into his and kissed her little forehead. "Sweetie, I am so proud of you wanting to give up your presents from your friends just so you can have Seamus at the party."

Melissa grinned at her father, her bright blue eyes twinkling just like Annie's when she was in an extremely mischievous mood. "Daddy, I don't _want_ to, but I will if it means my bestest friend can have fun, too."

Dudley laughed, sweeping her off the floor in a bear hug. "That's my girl."

Melissa laughed, too, as she put her arms around her father's neck. "Daddy?"

"Yes, dear?"

"Can I have a pirate party?"

#####

"She wants to what?" Annie wasn't sure if she had heard Dudley correctly.

Dudley shrugged as he finished emptying the market bag onto the table. He put the eggs in the refrigerator as he answered his wife. "She wants to invite Seamus to her party. When I told her he might not come because the family probably couldn't afford a special gift for her she asked if she could tell him not to get her one. I told her it would only work if she told all of her friends that and so she agreed." Dudley grinned at his wife. "She's going to tell all of her friends not to get her a gift, just so Seamus can come and have some fun."

"Oh, my God." Annie laughed. "That is just amazing."

"Yeah, isn't it?" He folded up the bag and left it on the counter so he would remember to put it back in the car when he went to work the next day. "Oh, and she picked out her theme."

Annie smiled in pride as she walked out of the kitchen with her husband. "Oh, really? What's the theme this year? Princesses? Ballerinas? I have to admit I'm getting sick of pink."

Dudley grimaced. "Sorry, dear. Then you're going to hate this one."

Annie groaned. "It's princesses again, isn't it? All that glitter was such a pain in the _arse_ to get rid of last time."

Dudley reached behind his wife to pick up the cutlass he'd stashed on the hallway table, hemming her in on both sides.

"Dudley!"

"Avast, ye landlubbers. It's time for some pillaging." He leaned in to snog his wife. When they both came up for air, she whispered, "At least there won't be glitter this time," and pulled him back down for some pillaging of her own.

**November 28, 2013**

Harry and Ginny brushed the floo powder off their robes after they stepped thorough the fireplace. They saw Dudley standing there grinning like a fool.

"I just have to say, that is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Is that what it looked like before your father-in-law blew the bricks off the old fireplace back home, that emerald fire?"

Harry grinned back. "Yeah. Not my favorite mode of travel, but quicker than the car and safer than Apparation."

"Hunh." Dudley scratched his chin. "So, you can get here like that any time?"

Ginny nodded. "Harry had your home connected to the Floo Network since your house isn't technically a Muggle house with Bea here."

"Interesting. Does it go anywhere?"

Harry and Ginny grinned. "Anywhere on the Floo Network, but I don't know if you'd be able to get it to work, Dudley. Great big Muggle that you are," Harry replied cheekily.

"Hmm." Dudley replied simply. _I'll have Draco explain it to me when they leave_, he thought. "Well, anyway, thanks for coming over. I know this is going to be weird, but, well…" Dudley blew out a breath that ruffled his shaggy, blond hair. "Just come with me to the kitchen." He turned and left Ginny and Harry staring at his back. They looked at each other and shrugged, then followed Harry's cousin to the kitchen.

When they entered the room, the first person they saw was Draco Malfoy. He was laughing at something Annie had just said. He stopped laughing the moment he saw the Potters, though.

Dudley stood between the two of them. "Draco, Harry, I didn't know how else to do this but to just see if you two can be civil to each other."

Draco's gaze turned cold on Dudley, one of the few times he could remember seeing that look on his best mate's face, and arched an eyebrow. "You couldn't just ask us?"

Dudley squared his shoulders while he looked at both men, "This is my daughter we're talking about. It'll be the first time you two are together in my house. I have a feeling it'll be the first time you're together in one _building_ in at least ten years. Forgive me for wanting to be sure."

Harry and Draco glared at the man, equally pissed off at his lack of faith in them, then turned to each other, Harry asking first, "Is he always this much of a bloody pain in the ass?"

Draco grinned, teeth showing, "Not usually. I can only surmise his advanced age is starting to show."

Dudley sputtered, "You're older than I am, you git."

"I'm the git? You ambush me with Saint Potter (at this the wives just sat at the table shaking their heads at the testosterone flying through the air) and I'm the git?"

"Well, you've made no secret that he annoys you and I'll be damned if I want my daughter's birthday party ruined by two men who stand at opposite corners like the house is an effin' boxing ring!"

Draco was about to respond when he noticed Harry had joined the women at the table, chuckling. "Problem, Potter?"

Harry waved his hand at Dudley and Draco, finding the irony in the entire situation, "No problem, pray, continue, both of you."

Dudley and Draco looked at each other, trying to figure out a response to blast the annoying twit sitting in front of them, when Dudley realized the ridiculousness of it all and relaxed. He started chuckling himself. Draco glared at both men for another minute before he blew out a breath and started shaking his head.

He pulled Tori out of her seat, sat in it himself and pulled her down on his lap, muttering under his breath the whole time, "Idiots. I'm surrounded by idiots."

Dudley sat down at the last chair and apologized to his best friend and his cousin, "I'm sorry, guys. I was just really nervous about inviting you both to the same thing. Didn't have the slightest clue how to handle it. Obviously." He grinned. "I guess I just have to get you both annoyed at the same person."

Draco and Harry looked at each other and shook their heads. Neither man would ever be friends with each other, but they could bury the hatchet somewhere other than each other for Dudley and his family, although if he managed to annoy them both enough, it may just be buried _in_ Dudley.

"So, any ideas how I can tell Mum half the guests are going to be wizards and witches? Oh, and that one of them just happens to be her absolute least favorite nephew?"

Draco was the first to start laughing this time. Harry just groaned and put his head on the table.

_**AN:** So even with all of his advances in maturity, Dudley can still be an amazing idiot. Next up, Petunia... Dun dun duuuun_

_By the way, I'm sorry this is late and I haven't responded to the latest reviews yet. I will be doing that after I publish this. Work was just a real pain the last two weeks. I'm up to chapter 26 in writing this story and a few of them have been giving me hell. I've already told you I know where the story is going, I just want to make sure you enjoy the ride. A few of the upcoming chapters may seem pointless, but never fear, they have a purpose. It's looking as if it'll take me about forty chapters to tell it right. Maybe a bit more than that, but I can't really see less._


	16. Chapter 16

**January 3, 2014**

Harry Potter and Dudley Dursley were about to beard the lion in its den, otherwise known as Petunia Dursley, living at Number 4, Privet Drive. They were there at that moment because they knew Vernon was out at physical therapy. He was being kept on a strict diet and exercise regimen that included physical therapy four times a week. He was slowly regaining his strength, even though he'd never get it all back. His heart just wasn't strong enough and he simply didn't care enough. He only left the house for PT. He wasn't even going to go to his grand-daughter's birthday party.

Dudley pulled the car up to the front of the house. "I'll go first, Harry. If Dad's gone, I'll come back out for you. If I'm not out here in five minutes, go around the house and Disapparate from the back yard. We'll try another time."

Harry nodded. "Fancy meeting me will give him a heart attack that just might finish him off. I'd rather avoid that, if possible."

"Yeah." Dudley waited a moment and got out of the car. He opened the door to the house and went inside, calling out, "Mum?"

Petunia was upstairs when she heard her son's voice. She replied, "Upstairs, Dudley!" She expected him to come right up and was surprised when she heard him ask if his father was still here. "No, dear. The van came for him ten minutes ago. You just missed him."

"Okay. Good." Dudley opened the front door and waved Harry in.

Petunia was surprised enough by her son's strange behavior that she stopped the window washing she was doing and went downstairs. "Dudley, what do you mean by 'Good'? Don't you want to see your father?" she asked defensively as she descended the stairs with wadded-up newspaper in her hand.

Dudley was in the living room with Harry behind him by the time his mother finished stalking down the steps. "Well, honestly, at this moment, no. I don't think he could take it."

"Take what, Dudley?" Petunia was starting to get good and annoyed with her only son.

"Me, Aunt Petunia." Harry stepped out from behind Dudley. "We were afraid the sight of me wouldn't do him any good whatsoever."

Petunia raised her hands to her mouth, shocked to see Harry. She had never expected to again. Even knowing Dudley had reconnected with his cousin, she still hadn't expected it. Her eyes filled with tears as she saw her sister's eyes staring back at her for the first time in over sixteen years. "Oh, Harry."

Harry smiled. He had tried to forgive Petunia a long time ago. Seeing Snape's memories had put a new spin on the way Petunia had treated him. He only felt a little uncomfortable when she reached out and pulled him to her in a surprisingly strong hug. They were about the same height. When she let him go, she dropped the newspaper on the table and put her hands on his cheeks and looked deeply into his eyes, something she had rarely done when he was a growing up. She smiled, tears running freely down her cheeks. "I have something for you, Harry. I was never sure how to get it to you, and I suppose I was selfish for wanting to do it myself. But you so remind me of her. You always did."

Harry and Dudley followed Petunia to the cupboard Harry used to sleep in. She ducked inside and pulled a box off the top shelf. It had been there when he slept there. Harry remembered it. It was always locked and he had been forbidden to touch it. The box had disappeared around the time he was fourteen. Petunia brought it into the kitchen where she took the top off the flour pot and pulled a key that had been taped to the inside free. Dudley and Harry both raised their eyebrows at the implied secrecy of the maneuver. Petunia grinned cheekily. "Your father thought I got rid of these ages ago."

She opened the lock and pushed the box over to Harry, nodding at it. "Open it."

When he did, he saw pictures. Muggle pictures. Pictures of his mother as a child. Pictures of his Aunt Petunia and his mother. His Evans grandparents. He had a few pictures of them that he'd found in the Potter vault after the war, but he knew next to nothing about them. As he flipped through, he saw a picture that surprised him. It was of Lily and Petunia…and Severus Snape. It must have been taken the first summer they had come back from Hogwarts. Lily and Snape looked happy, while Petunia looked like she would rather be anywhere _but_ in front of the camera.

Beneath the photographs were letters to Petunia in his mother's hand.

"Why?"

"Why give them to you? Or why did I keep them in the first place?" Petunia took a deep breath. "I'm trying to make up for how I treated you, I guess. I've wanted to give you these for some time now. But I didn't want to part with all I had left of her, either." Petunia reached out and traced over the delicate writing addressing the top letter with her fingertips.

"I loved her terribly, you know. She was my sister, how could I not? Then she left us and was so happy in that school. She was so happy doing things that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Things that made my parents beam. I was _so_ jealous. Everything I did was just _normal_. It was ordinary and boring.

"So I scorned her and the things that I couldn't do. I rejected the magical and found happiness in the mundane. But I couldn't give her up completely. She was my _sister_. When our parents died I took all of the photographs before we sold the house. Lily and your father were apparently already in hiding from Lord Voldemort by then. They couldn't even come to the funeral. It just felt like one last betrayal to me. My sister couldn't even come to say goodbye to the parents who adored her so much. It made me furious. I almost destroyed every one of these photographs and letters then.

"But my parents were gone. My sister was so far away she might as well have been dead. I had Vernon. And I had Dudley. I craved the normal, the ordinary. I needed it to stay sane. Then she died. And I lost my chance to tell my sister I loved her. I could have, should have, been a mother to you. But you looked so much like your father. I blamed him for getting her involved in the fight she was in. But you had her eyes, Harry. You looked up at me with her eyes and I was so _angry_. Angry at her, angry at him, angry at Lord Voldemort, angry at you, but most of all, angry at myself for not being strong enough to let go of my jealousy and just be her sister. I took that anger out on you. The only true innocent in the entire situation. I was wrong and I hope you may someday forgive me, Harry. Maybe one day I'll even forgive myself."

The tears were running unchecked down Petunia's face as the words came out of her in a waterfall. Dudley stared at his mother, gobsmacked. She rarely admitted weakness or fault. She was always strong. Always too proud to admit when she was wrong.

Harry was surprised to feel tears running down his face, too. He had never expected this from his aunt. The most he had hoped for from meeting her today was a truce for the kids' birthdays. He had never expected to hear her say she was sorry for the way she had raised him.

Harry nodded and told Petunia, who was looking at him with eyes filled with both hope and shame, "I do forgive you, Aunt Petunia. I'm sorry both of us didn't know her longer and better."

Petunia felt the boulder lift off her chest and squeezed his hand. "Oh, Harry. Let me tell you something about your mother."

#####

Harry left with the box an hour later. Vernon was due to arrive any minute and they didn't want to risk his health with the sight of Harry as it was the mere idea that Dudley was consorting with his cousin that had finally tipped the balance the first time. Petunia sat in the kitchen, a bit dazed. "You going to be alright, Mum?"

She looked up her son and smiled happily. "Yes, Dudley. I will be. It's just, that was the first time in a very long time I've talked about Lily. I miss her, every day."

Dudley nodded. He knew how emotional catharsis could be from counseling. But his father would be home any minute and he'd never understand. "You might want to tidy your face up, or Dad will see you've been crying. Unless you want to tell him why, of course."

Petunia raised a single eyebrow at her son. "Don't be snippy with me, young man."

Dudley laughed. "How do you do that? That thing with the eyebrow? You can do it, Harry can, Draco can, even Annie and Bea can do it, but I still can't after years of trying!"

Petunia just chuckled and patted her son on the hand as she got up to repair her make-up. She never had been a pretty crier.

She called out as she left the kitchen, "Will you stay and visit with your father for a bit, dear?"

Dudley nodded and wandered over to the refrigerator to take a peek at the contents, hoping for some meat. "I thought to. Don't you have any lunch meats in here, Mum?"

"Not with your father's diet, Dudley. Too much sodium. Sorry."

"S'okay. I was just hoping for a sandwich or something." Dudley heard Petunia chuckling as she left the bathroom, having restored her face to its pre-Harry visit glory.

"I must admit, I never would have expected you to live on a primarily vegetarian diet."

Dudley grumbled. "Neither did I. Sometimes I just want to eat an entire dead cow."

"Better than a living one, I guess."

_**AN:**__ I'm sure some of you were hoping for a real screaming and shouting argument between Harry and Petunia, but I just don't see it going that way. Sorry. That year in hiding and the way Dudley and the grandchildren have turned out has had as profound effect on Petunia as it did on Dudley and Vernon, for the better in her case._

_Thank you, Dad, for pointing out my dinner gaffe. I usually over-punctuate! And thanks, again, to all of you who have followed, favorited, and reviewed my story. Here's hoping I can keep everything interesting._

_The next three chapters all occur on the same day and I _finally_get to introduce someone I've been dying to bring into the story in Chapter 19. _


	17. Chapter 17

**January 11, 2014**

There was an invasion of tiny people afoot. Annie bobbed and weaved her way to the kitchen from the living room as if she had been the boxer, not her husband. Petunia was there, putting the final touches on the birthday cake she had insisted on making for her grand-daughter's sixth birthday. She smiled at Annie as she walked into the kitchen. "How are the little savages?"

"Why do I do this every year, Petunia?"

Petunia laughed at her daughter-in-law's forlorn voice. "Because you love it, of course."

Annie shook her head ruefully. "I must be insane. Because you're right."

"Well, we had a few pretty interesting birthdays when Dudley was growing up, too."

Annie laughed. "He and Harry have told me a few of the things that happened as they grew up. I still wish I could have seen that tail. There was also something about Dudley, the zoo and a snake." Petunia snorted as Annie continued. "I told Dudley, no birthday trips to the zoo for us, after that one. Bea has a thing for tigers."

"Oh, dear." Petunia just shook her head and started cleaning the icing bag she had used.

Annie walked over to the table and whistled as she took in the cake Petunia had made for Melissa's birthday. It was made to look like a pirate's treasure chest, with little cookies decorated like gold doubloons scattered around it, one for each child coming to the party. "Petunia, I've said it before and I'm going to keep saying it. You need to go into the cake-decorating business."

Petunia smiled. "Thank you, Annie. But it's just something I love to do. If it was a business, it wouldn't be fun anymore."

"At least let me take a picture before our little pirates destroy it." She left the kitchen to get the camera.

Petunia smiled at the cake she had just finished. It _was_ one of her better efforts. She missed making big desserts so she tended to go all out when she got the chance anymore. While she was waiting for Annie to come back in she noticed a tiny finger reaching for the cake. "Ahem."

The hand darted back under the table. She smiled as she grabbed the bowl with the tiny bit of icing she was about to rinse out and said to whichever stray child was under the table, "If you'd like some icing, I have some in this bowl you can lick." She held the bowl just out of reach but within sight of whoever was under the table.

After a moment, the chair in front of the table moved and a tiny head poked out carefully. It was a little boy with shaggy black hair and doe-brown eyes. He looked at the bowl she held cautiously. "It's alright, dear. You can have some. But you must not touch the cake yet, alright?"

He nodded his head jerkily as he reached for the bowl. He scrambled out from under the table with his prize and carefully sat at the table, his eyes darting between the cake, the bowl of icing and Petunia. When he seemed reassured by her going back to the dishes he carefully put a finger in the bowl and scooped up a swirl of icing. He grinned after he put it in his mouth. "It's good, mum," he said. "Thank you." Petunia smiled at him, happy to see he'd had some manners drilled into him.

"You're welcome, dear." Petunia finished the last dish except for the bowl of icing and picked up the tea she had brewed for herself earlier. She grimaced when she felt how much it had cooled down and poured it into the sink. Putting the kettle on and bustling about the kitchen seemed to put the boy further at ease. He was almost done with the icing in the bowl when she sat down at the table herself to wait for the water to boil. "So, which of Melissa's friends are you, dear?"

The boy's eyes grew wide when she addressed him. He gulped, "Seamus Murray, mum."

"It's very nice to meet you, Seamus. I'm Miss Petunia, Melissa's grandmother." Petunia kept her voice gentle. The boy reminded her of how skittish her nephew could get as a child. "Do you go to school with Melissa?"

The boy started to relax a little. "Yes, mum. Me and her are best mates." He said this proudly and grinned, showing a gap where one of his teeth had fallen out and a new one was coming in.

"I see." Petunia smiled at him. "I'm glad she has some good friends. But why aren't you out celebrating with the others, Seamus?"

The bowl of icing had obviously made Seamus decide Petunia was in the safe category of adults because he didn't tense at this question. "I had to use the loo, mum, and I saw the cake when Mrs. Dursley went out and I had to touch it. It's boo-tiful."

Petunia chuckled. "Thank you again, my dear. I think I did a pretty good job on it, if I do say so myself." She noticed the bowl of icing was now empty. "But I think you probably want to join your friends now, right, Seamus?"

He looked down at the empty bowl and grinned. "Yes, mum. It was really good."

"Go on, then. I'll see you in a bit." Seamus jumped down from his chair and brought the bowl to the sink. He ran through the doorway just as Annie was about to and she juked to the side to miss being plowed over by the five-year old.

"Ah, so that's where Seamus went." Annie said as she walked in with the camera. "Liss said he went to the toilet."

Petunia chuckled. "He did. Then he saw the cake and wanted to touch it."

Annie's eyes widened as she looked the cake over for damage from questing fingers. Petunia caught her actions and said, "Don't worry. I caught him before he got to anything. I gave him the rest of the bowl of icing, instead."

Annie groaned. "All sugar, Petunia? Are you trying to do your daughter-in-law in, after all?"

Petunia laughed as Annie took her pictures of the cake from all sides. "There wasn't that much left. After God-only-knows how many years, I'm pretty good at judging what I need." Petunia paused for a moment. "Annie, have you noticed how skittish he is?"

Annie looked up from the camera and met Petunia's eyes, "Almost like he's afraid to annoy an adult, you mean?" Petunia nodded. "Yes, we've noticed. Dudley's working on it. He won't give me any details, though."

Petunia nodded again and took the kettle off when it started whistling. She poured herself a cup. "Why don't you go in and ask the other adults if they want some tea, dear? Or something else? The savages are probably running all of you ragged."

Annie groaned. "Tori, Becca, and Ginny are in charge of them right now. Draco, Sam, Harry and Dudley escaped outside. Something about looking at a belt on the car, the bloody cowards." She shook her head. "As if any one of them can actually fix anything on a _car_."

Petunia chuckled. "You'd think Dudley, at least, could ride herd on them."

"Oh, _he_ said he does it all bloody week and this is the weekend, as if we women don't do anything with the children all week long."

Petunia snorted at the arch tone in her daughter-in-law's voice. "Well, then. We'll have to do something about that, won't we?"

Annie cocked her head at her mother-in-law. "Oh?"

"Well, it is snowy outside, after all. And all of the children did come bundled up in their warmest hats and gloves. I think a bit of outside fun might be in order, don't you?"

Annie grinned at the evil glint in Petunia's eyes. "And the big, strong, cowardly men are all bundled up already, outside looking at the car. Brilliant, Petunia! The hens are giving the chicks to the roosters for an hour."

_**AN:**__ Okay, this one and the next two chapters happen on the same day. They're all set at the party. Yes, enough happens that I get to split the party into three chapters. Welcome to the madness._

_Thanks, as always to those who have reviewed, favorited, and followed my story. I'm nervous as anything right now because I just handed my work to date to some friends to go over. They will be wonderfully, brutally, honest with me and the three (five, if two of them actually hand the work to their husband or daughter to also read) have very different tastes and viewpoints, so I may end up changing things that I've written for the future chapters._


	18. Chapter 18

**January 11, 2014**

The party had been a rousing success. The cake was demolished and the little gift bags were being enjoyed by the little pirates. Each of the remaining adults had taken at least one dose of the headache potion Ginny had thought to bring, even Petunia, to the surprise of all (especially Petunia).

Sam and Becca had already left with their family and almost all of the kids had been picked up by their parents. The only non-Dursleys remaining were Scorpius, James, Albus, Lily, and Seamus. The Wizarding kids were trying to be careful not to do anything magical around Seamus. They were playing rummy with two decks, and Evan was sleeping in his mother's arms, when something completely unexpected happened.

Albus discarded a playable card and three people called rummy and three hands went for the card. Lily got there first, followed by Seamus and Bea. There was a sudden spark as the card burst into flames. The three kids pulled their hands back quickly as James, reacting first, patted the flames out so the carpet didn't catch fire.

Seamus stared at the card in shock for a moment and got up and ran from the room. Petunia followed him while the other adults took care of the other children. She searched the upstairs rooms quickly and found him huddled in the corner of the washroom, sobbing. She knelt down carefully on her arthritic knees and put her hand on his thin shoulder. He looked up, surprised, but when he saw it was the skinny, but grandmotherly old woman he didn't hesitate to throw himself in her arms.

She let him cry himself out as she sat on the floor of the bathroom with the boy. Dudley poked his head in after a minute but she shook her head at him, letting him know he should go away. He didn't say anything, just nodded and went back downstairs.

After Seamus had stopped crying and was down to a few hiccups, she tilted his head up and gently brushed the dark hair out of his eyes. "Why did you run, dear?" she asked him. "Did the fire scare you?"

Seamus blinked a few times, tears still in his eyes. "No, mum. I don't want M'liss to hate me."

"Hate you?" Petunia was stunned. "Why would she hate you? You haven't done anything to her, Seamus."

"I started the fire," he whispered. "Sometimes I start fires when I get 'noyed." Seamus looked down at the floor, unable to meet her eyes in his childish shame.

Petunia suddenly realized this child was yet another wizard in the making. She had so many of them around her now the illusion of normalcy she had cloaked her life in seemed like a colossal joke on her. She brushed her hand over Seamus' hair and shook her head. "Don't worry about it, Seamus. I promise you, Melissa will not hate you."

Seamus looked up at Petunia, a faint glimmer of hope in his eyes. "Really? She won't, even though I'm evil?"

"Evil?" Petunia started, "Who called you evil?"

Seamus' shoulders slumped down further, "My da. He says I'm cursed."

Petunia's lips narrowed in anger. "No, sweetie. You're not cursed. You can…you're, well, I'm not sure I should be telling you more." She moved to carefully stand up and he joined her. He took her hand when she put it out to him. "Let's go downstairs and I know Harry will have a better explanation than I. Alright?"

Seamus wasn't quite convinced. "They won' be angry at me?"

Petunia smoothed Seamus' hair once more. "No, dear. They will not be angry with you. I promise."

Seamus followed her downstairs then. The room became silent when they entered. Then Dudley broke the silence with his question, "Are you alright, Seamus?"

Seamus cast his eyes down, wanting to trust that Miss Petunia would be right, but not wanting to get his hopes up, either. "Yessir." He looked back up, daring a brief second of eye contact. Mr. Dursley was a teacher at his school and he'd never heard anything bad about him, but he was awfully big. "I'm sorry about the cards, Mr. Dursley."

Dudley wasn't as surprised by this as he would have been five minutes ago. All the magical kids swore they hadn't set them on fire. So, it must have been this small boy in front of him.

He nodded at Seamus. "It's alright, Seamus. We have a lot of decks of cards in this house. Between Bea losing her temper and Evan hiding them all over the place, I sometimes think we should buy them in bulk." Seamus didn't know what buying things in bulk meant, but he knew by the tone of Mr. Dursley's voice that he really wasn't angry.

"Why don't you sit down with Melissa and we can figure out what happened, okay?"

"Yessir." Seamus found himself a little reluctant to let go of Petunia's hand, but when he looked up at her he saw she was smiling and nodding at him, so he did it and went to sit over by Melissa on the floor. He looked at the other kids and noticed Albus and James were grinning at him for some reason. He gave him a quizzical look as he made himself comfortable. He felt a little better when Melissa reached out and took his hand. He felt loads better when she leaned over to whisper loudly, "It's okay. Bea made the cards _explode_ the last time I beat her playing War."

Seamus looked at Bea with wide eyes. She glared at her little sister for telling on her loss of control. "Really?" he asked her. "You did that?"

Bea sighed with the air of someone much older and much put upon by younger siblings. "Yes, I did. But she made me."

"I did not."

"Yes, you did. You were ob-nock-shus about beating me." Bea made sure she pronounced her newest word carefully.

"I was not."

"Yes, you were-" A was-not-was-too war threatened to break out, guaranteeing more cards would go up in flames, but Dudley stopped it in its tracks.

"Girls," he said simply. "Not helping."

In stereo, the girls replied, "Sorry, Daddy." It was something Dudley heard an awful lot. He just sighed, while the other adults tried to prevent smiles from breaking out over their faces at the words they heard all too often from their own offspring.

They had decided that Harry would ask the questions, since he seemed to have a knack for kids. It was also partly because Dudley had told Harry he thought Seamus was being abused at home. If a wizard was doing that, it would fall under Harry's jurisdiction, not the Local Authority.

"Seamus," he asked with a smooth voice, to not startle the boy, "have you done that before?"

"Yessir. Just not cards."

Harry nodded. "Other things when you lose your temper or get scared?"

"Yessir. 'Specially close to the Moon, like now." Seamus hung his head. "Mummy told me to watch my temper today because of it. I forgot."

"The moon? The Full Moon, you mean?"

Seamus just nodded. Harry and Ginny looked at each other. Teddy got pretty moody and snappish around the Full Moon. He had never turned into a werewolf, but when he was little it had always seemed like he was going to. The normally easy-going Bill became downright surly every couple of Full Moons, the same with his kids.

Ginny asked, "Do you hurt, Seamus? Like your bones want to move inside your skin?"

Seamus looked up in surprise. "Yes! How-" Seamus never got to finish the question because the doorbell rang.

Annie got up. "It's Seamus' mother. This is about the time she said she'd be able to pick him up." She walked out of the room, giving Seamus another smile and brushing her hand over his hair gently as she did. He stood up himself.

"I'll get my coat on." Dudley waved him back down.

"No, Seamus. You stay here with the other kids for a little bit more, alright?"

Petunia, Draco and Tori stayed behind while the other adults got up to talk to Seamus' mother. Petunia grabbed Harry's hand as he passed her by and pulled him down to quickly whisper what Seamus had told him about his father calling him evil and cursed. Harry held his breath for a moment, blinked, then nodded and joined the others in the hallway.

_**AN:**__ Alright, second chapter of the party and in the next chapter I finally get to introduce a character I've been dying to bring in! _

_Thanks to all the reviewers and people who have favorited and followed the story. I really appreciate it. I've been trying to do as much research about the area the story is happening in to make it as authentic as possible. I'm not English, so even though I try, my American is definitely slipping through. LOL. I'll try to do better with my British-isms, though. Thanks, guest. I'm not killing jackass, as it's one of my favorite curses and relatively innocuous, but I'll try to go back and fix some of the other things I missed._


	19. Chapter 19

**January 11, 2014**

Annie pulled Lavender into the kitchen on the pretext that Seamus was getting his things ready and she wanted to make her some tea before she and Seamus left for the bus home. Lavender hesitated a bit, but it was cold outside and the house felt pretty warm to her. She wasn't all that eager to make her son wait at the cold bus stop for almost an hour before the next bus came. Besides, she enjoyed chatting with Annie and didn't get to nearly often enough. She sat down at the table in the pretty little kitchen and found herself wishing.

Wishing things had been different. Wishing she hadn't been attacked. Wishing she'd had the courage to stay in the magical world. That line of thought always led her back to her son, though. She wouldn't have him if she had stayed. No wizard would have wanted a cursed witch. Leaving was the only thing she could have done, even if it meant she wasn't really prepared for life as a Muggle. But she had Seamus, and she had Tommy on his good days.

Her mind was racing as she watched Annie putting the kettle on to heat, but she forced herself to think about something else. "How did the party go, Annie?"

"Oh, it was wonderful. The kids had a blast. There's actually a little bit of cake left over, if you'd like a piece, you know. My mother-in-law made it. It was an amazing pirate chest."

Lavender smiled as she pictured the cake. "A pirate chest, huh? Not a fairy princess party, then?"

Annie grinned. "Thank God, no. I'm so sick of pink."

Lavender laughed and was about to respond when the door opened and Dudley walked in, followed by Ginny Potter. Lavender's jaw dropped and so did Ginny's. Ginny could scarcely recognize her in the worn, gaunt woman in front of her, but recognize her, she did. "Lavender!"

"Ginny," Lavender replied weakly, in shock. She didn't even move when Ginny plowed into her, hugging her tightly. When Ginny didn't let go right away, her arms moved up to embrace the other woman, too. Tears stung her eyes.

She didn't even hear Harry come through the door. She felt his hand on her shoulder and opened her eyes to see him smiling down at her. "It's so good to see you, Lavender. We've missed you."

That last bit was all it took and Lavender found herself crying into Ginny's shoulder, great sobs tearing out of her as she found herself in the warm embrace of an old friend, a fellow Gryffindor. Almost a family member.

It was a good five minutes before she could pull herself together. Ginny and Harry were there the entire time, stroking her hair and keeping a supporting hand on her shoulder. By the time she was done, her head was starting to ache and her nose was all stuffed up. Ginny had released her and was looking through a bag she had Harry retrieve from the cupboard in the hallway. She came up with a potion just as Lavender finished blowing her nose. "Here. Take this. It's for headaches, my sister-in-law's recipe." Ginny added it to the tea Annie put in front of Lavender. Lavender drank it quickly, closing her eyes while she pulled herself together.

When she felt the headache that was brewing behind her temples begin to recede, she felt strong enough to face the people in front of her. Ginny had taken a seat at the table while Harry stood behind her, his hands now resting on her shoulders. Dudley and Annie were both sitting down, too, looking at her expectantly. Lavender sighed. _Time to pay the piper_, she thought. "How did you know I'd be here, Harry?"

Harry shook his head. "We didn't, Lav. We had no idea you were Seamus' mother."

Lavender sat straight, "This is about Seamus? Where is he? Is he okay?"

Annie reached over and placed her hand over Lavender's, "Relax, Lavender. He's fine. He just set some cards on fire."

"Oh, no."

Dudley chuckled, "You have no idea how many cards we go through in this house, Mrs. Murray. Bea tends to blow them up."

"We didn't know if his mother needed to be told he's a wizard. That's basically what this was, Lavender," Ginny added. "Let's face it, if he doesn't have parents who understand, then it could cause some problems."

Harry added, "Especially with the Lycanthropy."

Lavender's eyes widened. "He doesn't change. Honestly he doesn't, Harry."

"We know, Lav," Ginny reassured her. "He just gets really grumpy and irritable, right, with some bone pain?"

Lavender slumped. "Yes. That's it, exactly. I try to keep him out of school for the few days closest to the Full Moon if it's a really bad month." She turned to Annie. "That's the real reason I was worried about him coming today. It's the start of the bad week for us."

Annie looked from Harry to Lavender. "I have no idea what you three are talking about. Lycanthropy? Isn't that werewolves or something?"

Lavender nodded miserably. "I was attacked by one. I managed not to turn into one, but I still feel the effects every Full Moon. My bones ache and I'm a complete and utter bitch to be around. Seamus inherited some of it. It's not nearly as bad as mine, I promise, the kids are safe. But still, it hurts."

Annie nodded slowly. "O-o-okay," she drew out her reply. "As long as the kids are safe, that's fine with me. Harry and Ginny seem not to be worried by it, anyway."

"We've dealt with latent Lycanthropy before." Ginny shrugged. "Lavender's not the only person attacked by Greyback we've known. She was just the last. My brother was attacked by him, too."

"Greyback?" Dudley asked.

Lavender shuddered at his name, but she answered. "He was the werewolf that attacked me during the battle at Hogwarts."

Harry picked up, "Ron and our friend, Neville, managed to defeat him and he was sent to Azkaban for life. He died a few months ago, Lavender."

A tight smile crossed her face. "Good," she said simply.

Before she could say anything else, Petunia popped her head into the kitchen. "Sorry to intrude, but Seamus is getting a bit nervous." Lavender stood up immediately.

"I'll get him. We have to get home anyway. Tommy will be coming home soon."

"Lavender-" Ginny started but stopped when Lavender shook her head no.

"Ginny, I know what you're going to say, but I'm not going back to that world. I can't. I'm sorry."

"But, Lavender, I know Parvati would love to see you. And Seamus and Dean, all of us, Professor Trelawny."

Lavender held her hand up to stop Ginny. "No, Ginny. I'm a Muggle now. I have a son."

"Who is a wizard. Are you even going to let him go to Hogwarts when his letter comes?"

Harry put his hand on Ginny's arm to stop her, "Ginny."

"No, Harry." Ginny shrugged his hand off as she came around the table to stand in front of Lavender. "He's not a Muggle, Lavender. He never will be. He's going to have to learn how to control his magic or it will control him and that could be disastrous." Lavender and Ginny stared into each other's eyes for a minute while no one dared say anything. Lavender broke first.

"Do you think I don't know that, Ginny? Do you think I don't know that my son is like me? What am I to do? Take him from his father and run away to a magical land where he can see everyone despise his mother for what she is? A half-werewolf? Shun _him_ just because he's the half-blood son of a half-werewolf?" Lavender hissed. "Hogwarts won't even send a letter! Seamus is just like me. It tears at me every month. It's been tearing at him since before he was even a year old! The wolf wants out. Do you think I want to hear my son whimpering every month from the pain? His father-" Lavender cut herself off.

"His father thinks he's evil and he's cursed, right, Mrs. Murray?" Petunia had come all the way into the kitchen and closed the door behind her.

"Yes! Yes! And he hates it! He hates the wolf. He can't deal with it! So he drinks it gone. Is that what you want me to admit, Ginny? Harry? Do you want to see me totally humiliated?"

Lavender collapsed into the kitchen chair, her face in her hands, the tears she had stopped before coming back with a vengeance. Solace came from the most unexpected place. Petunia put her arms around the weeping woman and glared at everyone in the kitchen. Ginny turned to Harry and whispered. He nodded and took Dudley by the arm, leading him out. Annie went to Dudley's cupboard and took out the bottle of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey Draco had given Dudley to celebrate The Anniversary. She poured three glasses and put them in front of the other women. She kept herself to her cup of tea.

Lavender's weeping lasted at least ten minutes this time. She had a lot of grieving to do. When she finally looked up, she saw Ginny nursing her firewhiskey. Ginny said quietly, "I don't want you humiliated, Lavender. I want you to come home. I want Seamus to grow up in a safe place." She took another sip. "I want you to be happy again."

Lavender straightened from Petunia's arms, who sat in the chair next to her. "Tommy was a good man, Ginny. He never cared about the scars, you know. He'd even hold my head as I retched from the pain during the Full Moon." She picked up the firewhiskey, holding the glass up so the light shone through, showing off the slight swirls and whorls that shot through it. "He was kind and gentle. And when we found out I was pregnant, he never hesitated. He wanted Seamus. He even let me name him after an old friend." She smiled wistfully.

The glass made a light plink as she put it back on the table. "I can't drink this, Annie. It does bad things to the wolf, especially this close to Full Moon." Annie just nodded, took the glass and reaching behind her, upended it into the sink.

"I told him about the attack. I told him I couldn't have kids. But we were careless, I guess, once. And so Seamus was here. At first Tommy was wonderful. He would walk him, change him, bathe him, everything. I caught him watching Seamus while he was asleep more than once." Lavender smiled in memory. "He had this adorable smile on his face. It was kind of like he was staring at this little person and wondering how he'd gotten so lucky. I know he caught me doing the same thing. We would tease each other about it."

The smile went away as Lavender's memories grew darker. "Then came Seamus' sixth month." Lavender looked at Ginny with sadness. "He wasn't even a year old, Ginny. But the wolf came anyway."

Ginny nodded. "Happened with Teddy, too, but he was ten months old."

"Teddy?"

"Do you remember Professor Lupin?"

"Yes, he was the werewolf who taught us third year. They said at St. Mungo's he died during the Battle."

Ginny nodded, her whiskey finished. "He and his wife died. They left a son, Teddy, but they made Harry his godfather. He was ten months old when it happened to him. It scared the shit out of me. Wolfsbane potion helps, you know. It helps reduce the pain."

Lavender nodded her head and took a deep breath. "I know. I give it to him." Ginny and the other women started at the reluctant admission.

"If you've left the magical world behind, how do you get it?" Petunia asked curiously.

Lavender sighed. "I brew it myself. Just that, nothing else. I get the ingredients from a wizard on the sly. Tommy doesn't even know."

There was silence as each woman digested what they'd heard. "Was Teddy able to go to Hogwarts?" Lavender finally asked.

Ginny smiled. "Yeah. They made a special room for him in case the wolf did win, but it never happened."

Lavender smiled sadly. "I can't afford Hogwarts, Ginny." She gave a mirthless laugh. "Tommy barely works now. He's more often than not drunk off his arse with his friends down at the pub."

Annie asked the question, "And when he's home?"

Lavender looked at her, "When he's home, if he's sober, he's my old Tommy. If he's not, well, Seamus and I read books in his room." She shook her head and asked on a gust of air. "He's his father, Annie. How can I take a man's son away from him? Of course I've thought about us just leaving him. But then he becomes my Tommy again, if only for a little while." Lavender sighed. "That Tommy is caring and loves both of us. It's the drink that makes him go away. It's the wolf that makes him want to drink. So, in a way, the wolf _is_ a curse, I guess."

Petunia put what the other women were thinking into words. "If he was truly caring and loving, he'd find a way to cope besides the bottle."

Annie put her hands out, studying her fingers. "I'm an alcoholic, Lavender. That's why I have the tea in front of me instead of the supposedly very fine firewhiskey Draco bought Dudley. It was and still is hard, but I had Beatrice to think about." She smiled, "Then I had Dudley, Melissa and Evan. It is possible, Lavender. You have to want it badly enough. Getting over any addiction isn't easy. Maybe he needs an impetus. For me it was either get clean or lose my child, one way or the other. Maybe that's what Tommy needs, too. I have the number for Al-Anon."

Lavender looked at the three women sitting around her and made a decision. She made a leap of faith. Maybe, just maybe, she could reach out for help and get her man back. Maybe it wouldn't work, but if it did… If it did, she'd have Tommy back and her son would finally have the father he deserved. "What's the number?"

_**AN:**__ Yay! I finally get to bring in Lavender! Before anyone screeches about her being dead, the books only say that she was moving feebly after the attack. I don't give a fig how the movies portrayed it. Until JK comes out and posts confirmation of her death somewhere that I can actually find, Lavender made it through the attack with major injuries and significant recovery time in St. Mungo's. If JK does come out and state she's dead, then this will be my rare AU bit. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :p __I'm going to be putting up some of Lavender's back-story in the coming weeks. I just had to wait until she was introduced. _

_And I'm sorry I didn't get this posted earlier. I've been working insane hours and going over the story to figure out where I went off-track. I've made a few changes to some earlier chapters that no one other than myself will notice once I put them up, just things like clumsy wording. I have hopefully figured out my problem and am moving forward now in the writing. I think we're still looking at around forty chapters. I might need to bump it up to forty-five, but probably not more than that. The kids are already starting to clamor for their own stories, the little brats. Evan, in particular, is drawing my attention for some reason._


	20. Chapter 20

**May 3, 2014**

"Beatrice Sheila Dursley, march up to your room and stay there. You are grounded for a week, young lady." Dudley pointed up the stairs as he sent his oldest daughter to her room. He was a pretty permissive parent, but he absolutely wasn't going to tolerate his eight year old daughter flinging certain four-letter words at him. Annie didn't say a word as Bea stalked past her, stomping her way up the steps. They heard the door slam a few moments later.

"What the heck did she do, Dudley?" She asked quietly.

Dudley flopped on the couch and ran his hands over his face. "She told me to eff off when I told her she couldn't go over to Emily's house tonight."

"She didn't."

"Yes, she bloody well did. I thought we had a few more years before we had to deal with teenage shit." He groaned. "Annie, I've never been as close to cracking any of my children across the mouth as I just was."

Annie sighed and curled up against her husband. "Wow. I figured the teenage pain in the arse would be Melissa, not Bea."

"Same here." He pressed a light kiss to Annie's hair. "I guess I should go upstairs and get the television and radio out of there, or her grounding will be useless."

"iPod too, dear."

Dudley groaned again. "I'm going to get the 'I hate you' bit, aren't I?"

"Most likely. But you're the one who grounded her, so you have to be the meanie." Annie gave her husband a hug. "I'll go up with you so she knows we're both terrible parents."

"Good." Dudley got up and pulled his wife after him. "Let's just get this over with." The two knocked on Bea's door loudly to overcome the music she was blasting. Dudley tried the door. It was locked.

"Beatrice, open this door right now. You know very well you are not to lock doors in this house." Dudley fumed as Annie yelled at the locked door. They looked at each other as they waited for almost a minute without hearing the door unlock.

Annie shook her head. "Beatrice, if you haven't opened this door in ten seconds you'll be grounded for a month!" Dudley yelled. "Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six." Before he got to five seconds the door unlocked. He pushed it open to see Bea fling herself back on her bed. "You know the rules, young lady. No locked doors in this house without permission."

Bea just looked at her parents and stated. "I want to go to Emily's house."

"Well, you are certainly not going there now. You might not be going there for a month if you don't behave," Dudley told his daughter as he stalked over to her stereo to turn it off.

"I was listening to that, Dad!"

Annie picked up iPod by Bea's bed. "No music for a fortnight, Beatrice. You're grounded."

Bea threw a pillow across the room as her father unplugged the stereo. "I need my music!"

Dudley handed the stereo to Annie and walked toward the television. "Well, you should have thought about that before you swore at me and then locked the door."

"You're terrible! I hate you!" Bea screamed. Suddenly the television started smoking. Dudley backed away from it quickly.

"Beatrice!" Annie snapped. "Control yourself." Her daughter's face crumpled as she started sobbing. Dudley pulled the plug for the surge protector so the television meltdown couldn't cause any other trouble.

"I hate it! I hate magic! I don't want it anymore!" Bea was wailing by the time she had finished. Dudley and Annie looked at each other as she buried her head in the remaining pillows on her bed.

Dudley sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her back. "It's okay, sweetie. You just need to learn to control your temper, kiddo." He grunted a bit as she flung herself into his arms. "Magic is really cool. You know that."

"But I'm different than everybody! I can't even talk about it with my _best_ friend!" Bea kept crying as she said this. Annie and Dudley looked at each other and grimaced. This, then, was the real problem. Bea was a really bad liar and the stress of keeping a monumental secret like this must be killing her.

"I know you don't like keeping it secret from Em, Bea, but it's for _her_ own good that you do. Those Obliviator people in the Ministry would have to make her forget what you told her. That can't be good for anyone's memory," Annie said after she put down the iPod and player.

"But I have to lie to her."

Dudley kissed the top of her head. "You're not really lying to her, you know. You're just not telling her everything."

Bea sat up, "But we _promised_ that we would never keep secrets from each other. She's my _best_ friend. I'm breaking a promise to her. I'm a horrible person!"

"Bea," her father said, "do you remember when we talked about lying and we talked about things called 'white lies'?"

Bea nodded. "Like when we tell Mummy something tastes great even if it doesn't?" Annie's eyes narrowed on Dudley.

"Um, yeah," he replied nervously, weighing the risks of his wife's annoyance versus his daughter's well-being and realizing that no matter what, he was going to be eating a lot of tofu the next week. "Kinda like that. Well, if you really believe that not telling Emily about your magic is a lie, then it's a 'white lie', meant to make it so she's not hurt."

"How?"

"Just like your Mum said, Obliviators will-" Dudley broke off as the doorbell sounded. He and Annie looked at each other and grimaced. Someone's timing really sucked.

Annie gave Bea another kiss and hopped off the bed. "I'll get it. Probably someone soliciting." She left the room as Dudley picked up where he left off.

"As I was saying, the Obliviators would come out and make sure she forgot what you told her. The Ministry is very serious about people violating the Statutes of Secrecy."

"But why? Who cares if she knows? She wouldn't tell anyone."

Dudley smiled. "You and I know that, kiddo, but the people at the Ministry don't –" Dudley stopped speaking as he heard his wife's raised voice downstairs. He gave Bea another kiss on her forehead and a quick hug. "I'll be right back, kiddo." He started to slip out of the room but stopped. "Do _not_ turn on your iPod or stereo. You're still grounded," he told her as he left.

He quickly moved down the stairs toward the front door. Annie was blocking it with her slight body and telling whomever it was that they were not welcome in the house. A quick glance showed that it was that Gladstone woman. Dudley's eyes narrowed and he paused to take out his cell phone. He dialed Harry's number, hoping he might actually get through.

_"Hello?"_ Harry answered after a few rings. _"Dudley?"_

"Harry, excellent. Listen, Bea blew up her television and now that horrible Gladstone woman is here. Everything is fine with Bea, but can you get here and get rid of Gladstone?"

Harry was silent for a moment. _"I'll be there shortly."_

"Thanks, mate."

As Dudley hung up, he heard Harry saying something to Ginny, but he was more concerned with getting to Annie. He joined Annie at the door, where the argument with Mrs. Gladstone continued. He put his hands on Annie's shoulders and greeted the woman in front of him. "Mrs. Gladstone."

"Ah, Mr. Dursley, excellent. Your wife is being totally unreasonable and refusing to let me fix what has happened." Mrs. Gladstone was totally oblivious to the fact that maybe, just maybe, insulting a man's wife in front of both him and her might not be the best way to get him on her side.

"Frankly, Mrs. Gladstone, nothing has happened that needs to be fixed." Dudley heard the bell tones Draco had added to their fireplace to let them know when someone was using the floo network sound and smiled. "Bea melted down her television in a temper tantrum. No one was hurt and the only thing harmed was her ability to watch television and listen to music for the next little while." He heard Harry come up behind him, "Besides, we already have help." He stepped to the side and let Mrs. Gladstone see Harry behind him and Annie.

"Mrs. Gladstone," Harry greeted the woman. "My cousin will be fine. The situation does not warrant a visit from the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad." He smiled at her, the kind that is only mouth and doesn't come even close to meeting the eyes. "Where is your partner, anyway?"

Mrs. Gladstone's mouth tightened. "I didn't tell him I was going. The alert came in just as we were leaving for the day. He and his wife have plans for the evening."

"I see." Harry decided not to upbraid her in front of the Dursleys for not following procedure. That could wait until tomorrow at work. "Well, Mrs. Gladstone, as you can see, I have the situation well in hand. Thank you for your prompt attention, but if we respond to every temper tantrum an under-age witch throws, we'll simply never get any real work done."

Mrs. Gladstone attempted to smile back at Harry, recognizing that she wasn't getting into that house. "Of course, Potter. I will see you another time." She turned cold eyes on Annie and Dudley, "Control your daughter." Before Annie could tell her what she thought of that, Mrs. Gladstone Disapparated on the front step, in full view of anyone who might be watching.

Harry cursed. He pulled his wand out quickly and muttered a quiet spell that would reveal if anyone had been watching. He nodded to himself when it revealed that no one had been watching.

"Harry, isn't she supposed to do that somewhere private?" Annie asked as she closed the door.

Harry sighed. "Yes, she is."

Dudley grunted, "How the hell old is that bat?"

"Too old," Harry replied. He followed the Dursleys to their living room. "She keeps refusing retirement. Says she has nothing to retire for." He sat on the loveseat. "Her kids were killed during the first Wizarding war and her husband and only grandchild during the last one."

"Isn't there a mandatory retirement age?" Annie asked.

Harry laughed. "Hell, no. Witches and wizards can be extremely sharp and active literally into their mid-hundreds. Dumbledore was pretty much still at the top of his game and he was a hundred and fifteen years old when he let himself be killed. It's really not unheard of for one of us to live quite healthily past a hundred and fifty. Mrs. Gladstone is only ninety-three."

"Great," Dudley muttered. "So, we should expect to see more of her when Bea has a tantrum?"

Harry's mouth twisted. "I'll try to remind her and the others what the rules are on spontaneous magic. But she may come back here. I'll let Anthony know that, if they do come back here, he's to take point, even though she's the senior partner." Dudley and Annie just nodded, knowing there wasn't much else they could hope for. Harry sighed, "What happened exactly, anyway?"

Dudley laughed mirthlessly, "Bea mouthed off to me and told me to eff off so I grounded her and sent her to her room. When we went up there to get her stereo, iPod, and television she'd locked the door and got in more trouble for that. As we were unplugging them she told me she hated me and melted the television. Turns out she's more upset about not being able to tell her best friend about the magic than anything else. They promised each other not to keep secrets." Dudley shook his head. "She's eight. She hasn't quite integrated the idea that keeping it secret is better for Emily than telling her."

Harry nodded. "Yeah. Want me to talk to her? I know a little of what it's like to have these amazing abilities and not be able to say a word about it."

Annie and Dudley smiled, perking up a bit. "Please, Harry. Maybe you can get through where we can't. Honestly, we just don't know exactly what she's going through," Annie responded hopefully.

Dudley muttered, "Maybe you can also show her some trick to control her temper other than blowing up playing cards and setting televisions on fire."

Harry laughed. "I'll try, Dudley." He started toward the stairs but turned around. "Oh, want me to fix the television?"

Annie and Dudley looked at each other and shook their heads at the same time. "No, Harry. We'll leave it in there just as it is for a while as an object lesson in controlling her temper," Annie replied. "We'll replace it eventually for her. It won't kill her to miss some programs."

Harry nodded and walked up the stairs to talk to his niece. Annie and Dudley decided it was probably better if they didn't go up there, so they went into the kitchen to start dinner. She gave Dudley the evil eye as she pulled out the meat substitute she'd thawed out the night before. He just grinned at her, walked over to her and planted a very long kiss on her. "I love you, Annie."

_**AN:**__ Poor Dudley. He's never going to get used to mostly vegetarian living._


	21. Chapter 21

**June 17, 2014**

Draco walked through the doors of Eyelops Owl Emporium, wincing at the squawks and squeals of the pets inside. He sighed as he walked past the ferrets standing up in their cage, chittering to get his attention. "I hate ferrets," he muttered to himself. The owl his family had for the last five years had been sick for a couple of weeks.

The clerk at the counter smiled as she looked up from what she was writing in the large ledger book on the desk. Her eyes widened when she recognized him. The smile slipped slightly before she resumed her professional demeanor. "May I help you, Mr. Malfoy?"

Draco smiled at the woman. She looked vaguely familiar and was maybe a few years younger than him. She had probably gone to Hogwarts with him, but he just didn't remember her name. "Hello. I was wondering if you might be able to help my owl." He held up the cage with Stormy in it and put it on the counter.

Stormy was a grayish-brown Short-eared Owl that had managed to endear herself with Tori and Scorpius the last time the Malfoys went looking for a family owl. For some reason, Stormy was as likely to nip him as she was to actually deliver a letter he gave her. For the last few weeks she had started to look like she was in a state of perpetual molt. She had lost some feathers and weight and had been a lot nicer to Draco lately. He had only gained one new scar on his hand recently.

The clerk looked at Stormy, who stared unblinking back at her. "Let me run a few tests on her. How old is she?" she asked while she pulled her wand out of her pocket.

"I think she's about seven years old. We've had her for about five years now." Draco watched the witch mutter a quiet charm over Stormy and shrugged as he continued. "She's not that old for a wizard-bred owl. My mother has had hers for almost twelve years now."

The witch nodded. "You're right. Our owls tend to have at least ten years more than the average lifespan of normal owls." She put the wand down. "However, Mr. Malfoy, your owl is actually quite sick. I'm finding traces of cancer in her. It's very odd. Owls very rarely suffer cancer, let alone Wizarding owls. I can treat it, but your bird will have to take some medicine for life. I have a spell that I'll use to treat her now."

Draco grimaced, thinking about the new scars he'd get giving Stormy her meds. Maybe he'd be able to con Tori into doing it. "Yes, please, do whatever you need to heal her."

"Of course, Mr. Malfoy, but you should be aware that just like cancer in the Muggle world, it can come back if it metastasizes. Magic still has its limitations." The clerk that Draco still hadn't placed in his memory pulled a bottle of powder from the shelves behind her and a jar of owl treats from beneath the counter. She opened both up and retrieved a few treats to cover with the powder. "This is a general medicine. It'll act with the spell to put the cancer in remission and get her immune system back on track. It'll take about two or three months for the treatments to take full effect. Give her two regular sized treats generously coated with the medicine daily and bring her back each week for the healing spell. I could show it to you, but it's a really complicated one that could backfire badly."

The clerk put on a leather glove and reached into the cage to pull Stormy out . Draco nodded as he watched the witch cast her healing spell. It was definitely one of the more intricate spells he'd seen performed. He marveled at how she was able to concentrate with all of the noise and chaos around her. After a few minutes of magic, she put down her wand and smiled. "After the treatments are done, Mr. Malfoy, I'll want you to bring her in twice a year to make sure the cancer doesn't come back. And if it does, we can catch it as early as possible."

"Thank you very much, Ms.?"

"Oakham, Mr. Malfoy. Hecate Oakham. I was two years behind you at Hogwarts."

Draco nodded. "I'm sorry I couldn't remember your name. I did remember you were at Hogwarts, though."

"No problem, Mr. Malfoy. I understand." She smiled. "Our paths never really crossed much at school. I saw Astoria more often."

Draco smiled, "Thanks, Ms. Oakham. I appreciate you helping me. Stormy may bite like a cannibal but she's part of the family."

Hecate grinned. "Well, I do love my job." She petted Stormy as she fed her an untreated owl snack. Stormy, the little traitor, didn't nip at her at all. "It may sound a little horrible, but I do love a chance to practice some of my more obscure animal healing spells."

"Not horrible at all. I'm just glad you were able to help." He reached out to pet Stormy and pulled his hand back quickly as the owl snapped at it. He sighed, "I think I'm glad, anyway."

#####

Draco still had Stormy's cage when he walked out of Diagon Alley into the small courtyard behind the Leaky Cauldron. Stormy had her head tucked under her wing and was taking a nap. He was shifting the other packages in his arms so he could open the door to meet his family when he heard someone behind him say, "Let me get that for you."

He looked back to thank the person and met the eyes of Neville Longbottom. They both stood still for a moment before Draco smiled tightly, "Thanks, Longbottom. I appreciate it."

Neville just nodded back and held the door open for Draco. Silence descended in his wake as Draco passed through the taproom to the dining room. He wanted to just fling out his arms and shout, "Yes, everyone, that evil Draco Malfoy is in the building! Lock up your children and your wives!" Instead he gritted his teeth and looked for his wife and son when he cleared the dining room doors. Scorpius saw him first and grinned when he saw Stormy in her cage. Draco just held the cage up a bit, nodded and smiled back.

"Hello, dear." Tori stood up to help divest him of some packages. "Did the trip to Eyelops go well?"

After he'd given her a short kiss and ruffled his son's hair, he sat down. "It went well," he replied. "The clerk on duty told me to tell you hello. Hecate Oakham."

"Oh, I remember her. She was a Hufflepuff. Nice girl. She works there?"

"Mm-hmm. She's actually one of their healers and she figured out what was wrong with Stormy. It's cancer, of all things, but she gave her a treatment already. We're going to have to give her meds and bring Stormy in for treatments for a few months, then meds for the rest of her life to keep it from coming back." He winced as Scorp fearlessly put his fingers in the cage to pet the owl. "You get to do that, though. If she's on the mend, she'll bite me before she takes the medicated treats from me."

He had opened the menu as he was talking and started scanning the selections. "Tori, are we going to Dudley and Annie's for dinner tonight or tomorrow?"

"Tonight, Draco. Why?" Tori sipped the pumpkin juice she had gotten right before her husband had arrived.

Draco grinned at her. "Just wanting to see how red the meat is that I need to order for lunch." Tori just shook her head in exasperation. Draco loved to torture Dudley over his nearly vegetarian diet. "Imagine what Bea's going to do when she goes to Hogwarts, Tori."

"Draco, you know perfectly well the food there will be just fine for her to stick to a vegetarian diet if she wants to."

"That last part is the real issue," Draco grinned. "Annie might end up with a little carnivore on her hands."

Scorpius piped up, "Dad, why would that happen? Bea likes the food her Mum makes."

"I know, son. So do I, for that matter. But, Scorpius, the Hogwarts kitchen elves are amazing chefs. The feasts were just, well, amazing." Draco heard someone laughing behind him. He turned and saw Hannah Longbottom. She always served the Malfoy family when they came in personally. He wasn't sure if it was because she didn't totally trust him not to hex her staff or the other way around. Either way, she was one of the few people in the Wizarding world consistently nice to him, even though her own mother had been one of Voldemort's victims. He could definitely appreciate Longbottom's good fortune in finding someone so kind to marry.

"I miss the desserts, Draco. Oh, those chocolate cakes." Hannah gave a tiny sigh at the memory.

"And the strawberry shortcakes almost a full foot high, right, Hannah?" Tori chimed in on the dessert love.

"Oh, yeah. I just wish I could convince one of the pastry elves to come work for me. You'd think my professor husband would be sympathetic to my cause, but no, the wretched man won't even ask them." Hannah shook her head in mock disgust.

Scorpius' eyes had grown wide. "Foot-tall strawberry shortcake?"

Draco laughed. "Now you've done it, Hannah. I know what he'll be craving for a while."

Hannah leaned in toward Scorpius. "Well, we wouldn't want you feeling deprived, would we? I'll see if my own not-quite-so-amazing chefs can whip up a strawberry shortcake for you to have at the end of lunch."

"Cool. Thanks, Mrs. Longbottom." Scorpius grinned the whole time Hannah took the family's order. They talked about nothing in particular while they waited for their food, Scorpius spending most of the time petting Stormy while he daydreamed about Hogwarts feasts and mountains of desserts.

He was pulled out of his daydream by his father snapping his fingers in front of his face. "Scorp? You there?"

"Sorry, Dad. I was just thinking about something."

Draco laughed. "Let me guess. You were thinking about the desserts at Hogwarts?" When his son just sheepishly nodded his head, Draco just shook his. "You are just like your mother."

Tori whapped his shoulder. "And what do you mean by that?"

He held his hands up in surrender, "I just meant that you love your desserts, sweetheart. Nothing more." He laughed at his wife's narrowed eyes. He turned his attention to Scorpius. "You'd better be careful when you go to Hogwarts, kiddo. Get into some sport, or we'll be rolling you home like that kid in that movie Bea likes so much." Scorpius and Tori laughed at the image.

"That's Willy Wonka, Dad. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." Scorpius grinned. "Bea said her Uncle George used it for some inspiration for some of his jokes."

Tori laughed, "Yeah, and then he had to get Hermione to figure out the legality of royalties between the Wizarding world and the Muggle estate of Roald Dahl."

"Who's Roald Dahl?" Draco asked.

"Oh, he's the author of the books the movies are based on that George was pulling inspiration from," she answered. "Hermione said she took George for a hefty retainer fee since she was working in both the Muggle and the Wizarding legal systems."

Draco's left eyebrow raised. "You mean she didn't waive the fee for a family member?"

Tori practically cackled. "She told me she would have if George hadn't _just_ given all the kids in the family, including hers, huge packages full of experimental Weasley products to try out for him." Hannah arrived with their food as Tori finished her explanation. "Thanks, Hannah."

"Of course, Tori. Anything else for you three right now? More pumpkin juice, Scorpius?"

"Yes, please, Mrs. Longbottom."

Tori smiled at her son. "Draco just told him he's going to have to get involved in some sport at Hogwarts if he wants to indulge in all of the deserts there."

Hannah laughed. "Maybe that football team Dean's been working on?"

Scorpius perked up at the idea. "There's a football team?" He turned to his dad. "I could do that, Dad. I play it all the time now with Omar and Artie."

"Yeah. Yeah, you could." He smiled. "Or you could play Quidditch. You're obsessed with brooms enough."

Scorpius grinned at his parents. He was finding more and more things to look forward to at Hogwarts. "I could be on the Slytherin Quidditch team _and_ the football team. That would be cool. Then I could eat _all_ the strawberry shortcake I wanted to!"

Tori and Hannah laughed at the boy while Draco just chuckled and shook his head. "Oh, yeah, definitely your kid, Tori."

_**AN:**__ Unending thanks to everyone who has reviewed, favorited and followed this story and the others in this cracked little world of mine. The next few chapters may be up a bit late. I've reached a spot where I have to rewrite a few that I'd already finished to fix where I went off-track. I have to add and rewrite a few chapters here and there to set things up correctly._

_And yes, I'm having lots of fun torturing poor Dudley with his mainly vegetarian diet, although I was looking up vegetarian meals to lend a little reality to any meals the family has and found one I'm going to try this Friday after payday. It looks yummy._


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